


Renovation

by ktula



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canada, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bickering, Class Differences, Dirty Talk, Edward Little's Nipple Piercings, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Back Together, Injury Recovery, M/M, Manual Labor Sol Tozer, Only One Bed, Second Chances, Shame Edward Little Power Hour, Sol Tozer Took the Midnight Train Going Anywhere, Threesome - M/M/M, and they were ROOMMATES, no you slid a threesome tag under the door at the last minute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28971825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktula/pseuds/ktula
Summary: If you ever need anything, just let me know,he said.Just go ahead and contact me,he said.Well, Sol Tozer's right up shit creek, and running back to his ex isn't doing him any fucking good when Edward doesn't remember making Sol any promises in the first place.Fucking typical, ain't that right?Fuck.
Relationships: Edward Little/Solomon Tozer, Thomas Jopson/Edward Little/Solomon Tozer
Comments: 55
Kudos: 57
Collections: Lieutenant and Sergeant Gift Exchange





	1. Demolition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vivacaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivacaine/gifts).



> Look, [vivacaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivacaine/pseuds/vivacaine), if anyone owes anyone an apology here, it's me....

It’s been a bitch of a day, and Sol Tozer is pissed. It’s not the bus ride, though that fucking sucks, and it’s not the broken strap on his army surplus bag, or the crick in his neck, or the sour stomach from his hangover, or the lost job, or the denied unemployment claim, or the eviction notice, or any one of the ten million other things that are absolutely fucking up his life right now.

“Text me _back_ , you bastard,” Sol hisses at his phone. All he receives are more glares for his trouble, and a few people shifting not-very-subtly away from him, holding tight to their bags and their children. He turns his eyes to his phone, glares at the near-empty message history.

There’s only one message there.

_Sol: hey im right up shit creek here. need to call in that favour._

And then nothing.

For three fucking days.

He shouldn’t have to say any more than that, is the fucking thing. When somebody promises something along the lines of _look, if you ever need anything, just let me know_ then they should fucking mean it. None of this—radio silence. This refusal to answer messages. They’ve got a history, and by god, if Sol’s to find out that ten or fifteen years of everything from casual fucking (great) to living together (disasterous) means absolutely jackshit when it’s _him_ that needs something...

Sol slams his phone down on the empty seat beside him, and thuds his head against the cushioned seat ahead of him. Fucking posh fucker. He’s probably changed his number six times over.

“For the last time,” says the guy in front of him. “Quit hitting my seat.”

“Hey, fuck off, asshole,” Sol says, and it comes out loud enough to get the attention of the driver, who starts slowing the bus down, and pulling over, muttering something into his radio.

_This might as well fucking happen_ , Sol thinks, and he starts jamming his stuff back into his broken bag so at least he’ll be packed up when they kick him off the bus. _Ride in comfort_ , his fucking ass.

Whatever. So he’ll walk to fucking—nowheresville.

Maybe somebody will run him over on the way, put him out of his misery. That’d save him some trouble.

🏚️

He doesn’t get run over on the way, which is great, but he doesn’t get picked up either, which fucking sucks. After the first mile, he doesn’t even bother sticking his thumb out anymore, because there ain’t nobody pulling over for him, not here.

It’s the fucking prairies, so he can see the shit-ass town he’s heading toward for about three hours before he actually gets to it, and there’s nothing to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other, run through a list of all his miseries in his head, and watch the little cluster of buildings on the horizon stubbornly not move, in comparison to the dark clouds on the horizon, which are distinctly moving closer.

He’s got a blister forming on the back of his right heel, and his left shoulder is all cricked to shit. The clouds are coming up on him quick, and the charge on his phone is ticking down, down, down. By the time it gets to five percent, the clouds are nearly overhead, he’s still a ways out from town, and Sol figures—fuck it.

Fuck this, fuck his pride, and fuck the asshole that hasn’t managed to acknowledge one goddamn text messaage in three days.

Sol stabs at the phone button, puts it to his ear. Listens to it ring. Once. Twice. Three times. He’s just bringing his phone down so that he can hang up when he hears it—a small, posh voice on the other end.

“Edward Little speaking.”

And christ if that doesn’t take the wind right the fuck out of Sol’s sails, because he’s sweaty, and in sore need of a shower, and his feet are killing him, and he’s still probably about an hour’s walk just from the outskirts of the town, and Edward sounds exactly the same as he had three years ago when he’d patiently explained to Sol that _actually this move is the right thing for me, and it’d be the right thing for you too if you were willing to be flexible about it_ and instead of being “flexible” about something that wasn’t ever gonna work for him ever, Sol had up and gone to the bar, and by the time he’d gotten back two days later, Edward had been packed up and gone, with three month’s rent paid in advance, and a note with his address on it that Sol had burnt right there on the kitchen counter.

(They’d taken that right out of the damage deposit, and Sol would have felt smug about it if he’d felt like the loss might have hurt Edward even a little.)

“It’s me,” Sol says, his voice cracking.

“Pardon me, who is this?” Edward says, his voice neutral. “I don’t recognize your number.”

Sol blinks, rubs his hand on his face. He pulls his phone away from his ear—maybe it’d be better to phone back once he’s had a coffee and washed his face in the nearest convenience store’s bathroom sink—but his battery indicator flickers _2%_ and he hurriedly jams the phone back to his ear. “It’s Sol Tozer,” he says, his words falling over each other. “Need your address.”

“...oh,” Edward says. “It’s, er.” There’s the sound of papers rustling, and then he reads the address off. There’s a pause as he finishes, and then Edward asks, “Why?”

Sol can’t tell what the fuck Edward’s voice is doing there, and he doesn’t have the context of Edward’s face. He hesitates. “Look,” he says, finally. “I texted you a few days ago, yeah? And I just—I’m more than a little fucked right now, and I just need to crash on your couch for a couple of days. No more than…”

But that’s the thing, isn’t it.

He has no idea how long this is going to last. The entire reason they’d broken up in the first place is because there were no prospects for a guy like Sol, not out here in the middle of nowhere. (And because Edward was being a fucking prick.) But there aren’t exactly any prospects for him in the city now either, not when there’s a massive economic downturn, and he’s been blacklisted from two of the three major construction companies in the city. (The third ain’t union, and fuck that shit.)

There’s nothing but silence on the other end, anyways. Maybe Edward needs time to think about it. Maybe Sol’s not welcome there regardless, maybe too many things have changed in the last three years.

Maybe it’s just that Sol’s phone is dead, completely, and he has no idea when the call might have been disconnected.

“Fuck,” Sol yells, loud enough to startle a flock of blackbirds, who take off like little shits, flying away from the oncoming clouds as fast as their wings can carry them. Lucky assholes.

Sol’s got no choice but to keep on walking.

🏚️

When the rain starts, Sol is close enough to town to see that the first building on the outskirts is a diner.

He’s drenched by the time he gets to it, and there’s no point in going in. By the time he’s crossing the railway tracks, the rain has stopped.

_C’est la fucking vie_ , or however the goddamn Quebecois say it.

🏚️

It takes exactly twenty-three minutes to walk from one side of town to the other, dripping on the sidewalk the entire way. Sol times it, on the big fuck-you expensive watch Edward had gotten him after they’d been officially dating for about two months, and Edward had forgotten Sol’s birthday—which, to be fair, Sol hadn’t told him about for precisely that reason. The gift of something so far outside his budget made Sol fucking uncomfortable, but it’s a damn near indestructible watch, so he’d gotten it back out again about six months after the breakup, which was how long it’d taken him to break the face on two watches which were decidedly _inside_ his budget.

There’s nothing remarkable about the town itself, except for the fact that it is absolutely _un_ remarkable. Sol avoids main street completely, sticks to the residential streets, such as they are. Everything is paved, technically, but it gives way to gravel at the edges, and the road’s in better condition than the sidewalk, most of the time. The houses range from rundown, with boarded-up windows and overgrown grass, to neatly maintained, with flower pots out front and recently-mowed grass, punctuated with the occasional dandelion. _Welcome to Red Lily_ , the wooden sign outside the diner had proclaimed, but it doesn’t feel welcoming, even though the sun’s come back out.

It feels like everyone is glaring at Sol, watching him as he trudges across town. He hasn’t been any closer to anyone than across the street, but still, any conversations that are happening absolutely stop the moment that Sol approaches, and though he’d considered asking someone if he had Edward’s address right, he’s since decided against it.

Still. Here he is.

And here’s the address gave him, the house Edward claims he owns and lives in.

It doesn’t look like any fucking thing that Edward Little has ever owned in his life, though. It’s an old house, for one thing—neatly painted and maintained, yes. But it’s not modern at all—it looks like it’s been in this town for the entire time the town has existed, just with a fresh coat of pale yellow paint on the house proper, and a newly rebuilt fence every decade or so since _established 1903_ , or whatever the hell the sign had said on his way in. There are roses planted in front of the veranda, and neat little gray curtains hanging in the windows. The curtains on the left window are opened, but the glare of the sun on the window prevents him from seeing anything. The curtains on the right window are closed tight.

Sol strides up to the veranda, fully intending to knock on the door, and spill his entire sob story to Edward in the hopes of cracking through Edward’s facade, and at least getting somewhere to sleep for the next night or two. Maybe he’ll offer up a blowjob. That used to help, back in the day, and Sol prides himself in fancying that he hasn’t lost his touch for them.

Instead, he takes one step onto the veranda, and puts his foot through the step with a horrible _crunch_. Pain lances up his calf and twangs through his ankle, and he curses louder than he should considering that the street he’s on is dead fucking quiet, and it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. Sol puts his weight on his other foot and _pulls_ , which is, of course, the cue for his pack to give up the ghost entirely, and with the distinct sound of canvas ripping, it spills his entire life out over Edward’s front step—Sol’s clothing, his collection of mid-two thousands _Playboy_ and _Playgirl_ magazines, a bunch of battered old _Star Wars_ novels from the eighties, before they wrecked the franchise by wiping the EU completely, all his old band tshirts, and a couple cans of ready-to-eat soup just in case he needed something when he was travelling.

He stares at the mess, and contemplates either screaming or crying, knowing that neither of them are going to make a difference.

Then he looks up at the now-open door, where Edward Little stands dressed in a suit and a tie, with hair curling down past his ears, an impressive set of muttonchops, and the same vaguely baffled look that he’s had on his face since Sol first met him nearly fifteen years ago, when Sol was on the campus football team, and Edward had gotten lost on his way to the computer sciences building.

“Your step’s busted,” Sol gripes. He lets go of his pack, lets it smack down onto the veranda, sending another can of soup rolling off the edge of the second step and into the roses.

“There’s a sign,” Edward says, pointing at a piece of paper that the light breeze has flipped up onto the railing.

Sol leans over and flips it back down. It says, in Edward’s terrible scrawled nearly-unintelligible writing, _do not use step_. There’s a piece of packing tape across the writing, to protect it from the rain. Sol sighs, and lets go of the paper.

The breeze promptly flips it back up again.

“Can I at least come in?” he asks, finally.

Edward doesn’t respond.

Sol grimaces, and yanks his shirt back down where it’d gotten hiked up from reaching for the fucking sign, leaving his hip bare.

Edward’s eyes dart back up guiltily. “Uh, yeah. I guess.” He gestures vaguely back into the house. “I’m on a call right now.”

Sol sighs. “Get back to your call.” He gestures to the broken step, and all of his everything strewn out over the veranda. “I’ll just...deal with this, then, shall I.” He looks down at his foot again, still completely through the board, and then braces himself on the railing, and gives it a good yank. Another chunk of the tread breaks off on the toe of his boot, but, hey, at least his foot’s free now.

When he looks back up to the door, Edward is gone.

🏚️

The best he can do for the fucking step is covering the hole with folded-up cardboard stolen from the neat pile next to the door, and a decorative rock borrowed from the front yard to hold it down. So now, on top of the step being busted, there’s a great big fucking gap in the middle of Edward’s—whatever the fuck. Decorative flower reclaimed rock fancy garden whatever. He’s surprised the rocks aren’t painted, to be perfectly honest.

(Knowing Edward, he’s probably paid top dollar for somebody to upcycle their fucking trash, and then paid a designer on top of it just to make sure everything’s at the Exact Right Angle in the front yard. Maybe painted rocks just aren’t in anymore.)

He shoves his arm in the roses once, but only for October 2010’s Playboy, because he’s nostalgic about Sasha Grey even though his tastes don’t tend that direction much anymore. The couple of soup cans he figures he’s missing can go fuck themselves: Edward will never notice they’re there.

Sol hauls the whole lot inside the front door, and just—yeah. Fine. Whatever.

The place in London had been all black and white and shiny marble and reflective surfaces that Sol kept getting his fingerprints all over, but sure, yeah, this place might as well be homey and rustic and making Sol weirdly nostalgic for his ma’s house. Yeah. Definitely. Great.

The house opens right up into the living room. There’s a closed door to Sol’s right, and he can hear the low murmur of Edward’s voice through it—the conference call, no doubt, because fuck knows that absolutely nothing pries Edward away from his work, and he’s got all the peace and quiet he needs to fucking, like, focus on it, or whatever, now.

Living room’s nice, though. Secondhand furniture, which is maybe why it reminds Sol of his ma’s, and not at all of anywhere that Edward would live. There’s a couch that’s been neatly reupholstered, but he recognizes the shape of it—one of those floral monstrosities from the seventies, redone in grey and burgundy. Edward’s laptop is out on the coffee table, and there’s a couple books left in one of the chairs by the front window. Photos of abandoned wooden grain elevators on the walls, and a couple shots of derelict houses in fields of wheat.

Nothing personal. Which is fine. Sol takes a step further into the house, and winces. Christ. He’d been ignoring it out front, but yeah, that’s...that’s a sprained ankle, at least. Possibly worse. He scowls, bends down and unlaces both work boots. Makes an attempt to pull his injured foot out, and—no. That’s just. Christ, it brings fucking _tears_ to his eyes, and all the time he’d spent limping around in Edward’s yard looking for even just a two by four, for fuck’s sake, or a scrap of plywood, hasn’t done much to help it. He gets the other boot off, leaves it next to the mat. (Trust Edward to have a mat that’s _exactly_ the size for two pairs of his own shoes, and nothing more. Perfect, thanks, ta. Didn’t particularly want to stay that long, now that you mention it.)

He hops over to the couch, feeling a bit like an elephant with all the noise he’s making. He half-expects Edward to poke his head out of the door, hiss _I’m on a call_ , like Sol’s forgotten—but, of course, he doesn’t, and Sol flops down into the couch with a sigh of relief.

The couch is pretty fucking comfortable, actually. He carefully puts his injured up on the weathered wood coffeetable, next to Edward’s laptop, and starts undoing the laces of his boot, all the way down to the toebox to account for how badly his foot’s swollen. Still, though—that weird rush of feeling the moment he tugs his foot free from the boot sets his skin prickling, and he sets his boot down on the hardwood with a weird sense of loss, because—that’s it.

He ain’t getting his foot back into his boot until it heals, and he hadn’t brought any other footwear. Edward’s feet are smaller than his, which means he can’t borrow anything from Edward—so either Edward buys something for Sol to wear, or Sol’s trapped in the house till either his foot heals, or staying with Edward does his head in, and he books it out of here in his bare feet.

Well, fuck.

His clothes are still wet from the rain. Mostly on his lower back, the backs of his knees. He probably stinks, too—all the walking and the sweating. Guess he should have thought of that before sitting down on the couch, but what’s done is done, and Edward’s just going to have to deal with the wet spot Sol’s ass is gonna leave.

Sol can see into the kitchen from where he’s sitting—fucking thing looks to be painted butter yellow, with white fixtures and tiled flooring. Shit job of the tile, though. He tilts his head to the side, considers. Well. If it was Edward that did it, it’s a fucking spectacular job, but that would have necessitated him getting his hands dirty. If the previous owner had done it, it’s alright. If Edward’s paid somebody to do it, he should have his money back—Sol woulda shifted the entire pattern half a run over, yeah, because he suspects there’s gonna be a tiny sliver of tile left over at the end of the room—but that’s not his problem. He doesn’t live here, and it’s not his responsibility.

He idly considers his chances of there being a bathroom on the main floor. Probably slim to none, in a house like this. More than likely, he’s gonna have to hobble upstairs for it, and he’s not so desperate that he won’t wait for Edward to be done with his conference call.

Christ, though.

What the fuck has tied Edward to Red Lily, of all the damn places? Sol thinks he’d passed a school on the way here, but god, how they’ve even got enough kids for one is completely beyond him. One grocery store, if they’re lucky. A bank. There might have been a coffee shop, but god. Edward’s certainly not getting his triple macchiato here. It’ll just be that generic shit in a styrofoam cup, and a raised eyebrow if you think you’re getting anything different.

The office has gone silent.

Sol checks his watch. Three pm, which means Edward won’t be done with work for another three hours at best. Longer if they’re in a software crunch, which they generally always were, so maybe it’s best if Sol just—

“Hey.”

Sol glances over.

Edward’s stepping out of the office, one hand loosening his tie, and the other tugging the door shut behind him before Sol can so much as get a look at his workspace.

“You didn’t answer my text,” Sol says, because his foot is throbbing too much for him to be particularly graceful about anything right now.

Edward winces, looks away. “Been screening my texts,” he mutters.

“Well, la-di-dah.” Sol gestures toward his bag, slumped against the wall, with a tshirt slowly oozing out of the top, and the broken strap limply laying on the floor. “Brought my shit with me, even though you didn’t bother to reply. I’m kinda fucked right now, to be honest about it.”

Edward’s hand comes up, rubs the bridge of his nose. His eyes skitter over to Sol’s bag, and then back across to the coffee table. His entire body stills, and swear to god, if he tells Sol to get his foot off the table—

“You’re bleeding on to—on the coffee table,” Edward says, stumbling over his words.

Sol looks at his leg. Sure enough, the leg of his cargo pants is darker than it should be, even accounting for the rain, and there’s a smear of blood on the wood. “Well, fuck.”

Edward sighs. Takes a step forward, and extends his hand without looking at Sol. “Bathroom’s upstairs.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sol says. He grabs Edward’s forearm, hauls himself up, nearly yanking Edward into him.

Edward’s still got skinny arms just like he used to, so apparently that New Year’s resolution about the gym seven years ago (and renewed every year since) had panned out to exactly nothing. Still, though, Sol’s cock throbs, and the resulting wave of arousal nearly blots out the angry pulse of his heartbeat in his foot.

God, of all the things he’d liked to have forgotten about Edward Little. Why was it that the sheer stupid pig-headed lust had to stick around?

“This way,” Edward says, and he holds his arm out awkwardly, stiffly, for Sol to lean on as they start hobbling toward the stairs.

Christ, Edward even _smells_ good. He’s switched his cologne. Smells like old books and leather, now. Like Sol needed that. He tries to focus on the carpet runner that goes up the stairs, the couple of places where it’s starting to come loose, or the fact that the railing could use a good sanding and a fresh coat of paint, but all he can think about is the way Edward smells, and the way Sol remembers him looking naked—that patch of chest hair, the treasure trail, the neatly trimmed pubes, the modest cock. Quiet and dormant when it’s soft, but Sol’s choked on it more than a couple times, and he’s a pretty good cocksucker when he puts his mind to it. And the _noises_ Edward used to make, the way he’d flush bright red and pull the pillow over his face like he was trying to hide from the things Sol was doing to him, but Sol would just fuck him harder, punch the noises out of him with the thrust of his cock, press Edward’s leg back into his chest until he was crying and sobbing for Sol, _don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop sol please please sweetheart please—_

“First aid kit’s under the sink,” Edward mutters, and then he gives Sol a little nudge into the bathroom, and shuts him in.

🏚️

The leg’s not as bad as it might have been. Sure, Sol could feel himself going green when he first looked at it, but now that he’s got it all washed off—

Who the fuck’s he kidding. He’s gonna need stitches. Probably a tetanus shot, too, because he can’t remember when the fuck he’d last gotten that done, but it’s maybe approaching the ten year mark. Better safe than sorry, etcetera, which is apparently what Edward was thinking when he bought this huge bastard of a first aid kid.

It’s not a big bathroom to begin with, but with Sol sitting on the closed toilet seat, and his fucked-up leg propped on the scaled-down tub, and the first-aid kit opened up and balanced on the sink, there’s hardly room to think, much less move around.

Still, though. It’s just. There’s tape in the kit and everything, and Sol had made an attempt, but just looking at his leg is grossing him out. He curses quietly, and reaches for the gauze instead, winds a bunch of that over the worst of it, slaps some tape on it, and then packs everything back up, shoves the kit back under the sink.

(He hasn’t looked in the medicine cabinet above the sink, yet. He wants to, but maybe it’s better to save that for a time when he’s a little less in pain, and a little more feeling petty about Edward and whatever bits of his personal life he has tucked up there.)

Sol braces himself on the sink, gets to his feet, and grits his teeth against the wave of woozy pain that washes over him the moment that his leg is lower than his heart. He opens the door—and that’s another thing that needs fixed too, because some jackass has installed modern knobs on the door, and that _definitely_ smacks of Edward paying somebody too much money to argue with him about a terrible decision—and Edward leans out from the doorway he’d been lurking in down the hall, cellphone glowing in his hand.

“Everything—”

“You got a fuckin’ hospital here?” Sol grumbles. He gestures at his leg, grips the bathroom counter hard enough with his other hand that his knuckles go white—but, hey, Edward can’t see that hand. “Think I need a couple stitches.”

🏚️

By the time all is said and done, it’s more than a couple of stitches—somewhere over ten, by Sol’s reckoning, and a tetanus shot in his arm that feels like a good healthy punch to the pride in addition to fucking hurting.

Edward’s not there when Sol hops out of the exam room, and Sol’s too tired and in too much pain to even be particularly upset about it. He has half a mind to ask if the nurses will just spot him some pain meds on his way out, because he’s not entirely sure if his credit card is going to work at the pharmacy next door, but figures it’ll just make him look like a junkie. As it turns out, it’s irrelevant—when Sol limps next door, Edward is lurking there holding a brand new set of crutches, and when he holds out his hand, Sol just passes him the prescription and lets Edward deal with all of it.

The crutches are no hell, but they’re a damn sight better than trying to lean on Edward without bowling him over in the middle of the street, so Sol shuts his mouth, and focuses on juggling his fucked-up leg and the crutches both in Edward’s tiny little car without knocking the windshield out. He mostly succeeds—bashes his good knee on the dash, yeah, but he dry-swallows a couple of pills the moment they pull away from the clinic, and by the time they’re pulling into the little carport in Edward’s back yard, Sol’s not too cranky about it anymore.

Edward doesn’t hurry to get out of the car once he turns it off, and there’s a long moment where Sol wonders if Edward’s going to, you know. Acknowledge it, or put his hand on Sol’s thigh, or even, stupidly, lean over and kiss him—but then Edward just sighs, and gets out of the vehicle without saying a word, leaving Sol to fend for himself with the crutches and his busted leg. He’s pretty sure there’d been a reason he’d gone running to Edward the minute his life had exploded, but damn it, watching Edward disappear into the house like that, without a backward glance, is making it fucking hard for Sol to remember what that reason might have been.

🏚️

The stairs in the back are in better condition than the stairs in the front, which, like. Go figure. Sol fumbles his way through, and then into the kitchen. He was right about the tile, as it turns out—it’s actually coming loose right by the back door. It wouldn’t have killed Edward to call him, is the thing. Sol would have come out and done some work for him, regardless if they were fucking or not fucking or whatever. Even after Edward had been such a dick about everything, Sol still would have come out.

“You hungry?”

Sol nudges a loose piece of tile back into place with the end of his crutch. Looks over at Edward, who is hovering in the doorway, cell phone in hand. God, he looks good. His hair’s longer now than it was, and he’s unbuttoned his suit jacket entirely, and the tie hanging loose around his neck is just—fuck. If Sol weren’t on crutches, he’d consider storming across the room and wrapping the tie in his fist and crushing his mouth to Edward’s, seeing how he tastes now, after three years, after—

“‘Course you are,” Edward mutters. “I’ll, uh.” He pulls open the fridge—it’s modern and new, horribly out of place with the rest of the kitchen. One of those fancy ones with the water dispenser and the little ice machine in it, the ones that always spring a leak and cause problems. “Um.”

Sol hobbles over, his injured foot—well, leg, really—swinging. The crutches are a lot more awkward than he thought they would be, to be honest. He peers into the fridge over Edward’s shoulder. “Don’t know what I expected,” he says, trying not to smell Edward’s hair. “The fuck is this?”

(He knows what it is—it’s the same shit Edward always does, which is order food, forget to eat it, and then shove it to the back of the fridge. Except this time, instead of fancy little origami takeaway boxes, and individually wrapped utensils, and sushi as far as the eye can see, it’s just styrofoam containers, and a half-empty bottle of wine of...oh, god, how the mighty have fallen. It’s Co-op brand wine, good fucking god.)

“It’s been a long year,” Edward says defensively, and, god, Sol does get a good whiff of his hair, then. He’s changed his shampoo too, the fucking handsome bastard. Sol grits his teeth, suppressing the desire to shove Edward against his stupid fancy fridge, paw his trousers open, and get his mouth on Edward’s cock.

If nothing else, the act of going to his knees is gonna put him in more pain than he wants to be in, especially now that the meds have taken the edge off it.

“Hey, uh,” Edward says softly. “Let’s get you sitting down, huh? Pain meds must be getting to you.”

Sol sighs, straightens up and turns around before Edward does anything stupid, like try to help him walk. There’s a ton of reasons that Sol might have wanted to rest his head on Edward’s shoulder, anyways, and the first couple of them don’t have shit to do with the pain meds, so Edward doesn’t need to be a fucking dick about it.

There’s a little tiny table in the kitchen. One chair at it, though there’s two others sitting against the wall with stuff piled on them. Sol clumps over to the chair and sits down. The chair creaks, because of course it does. He glances at the table, hoping that there’s something incriminating there, but it’s clean. Absolutely nothing on it. Not even a stray crumb.

“I am sorry,” Edward says. He’s still staring into the fridge, and not making an effort to look at Sol at all. “About the step.” He bends over, reaches into the back of the fridge and starts moving containers around. “The worst kind of—”

“Save it,” Sol says. “And none of that food’s going to be any good anyways. Is there fast food or something here?”

“There’s a diner?” Edward says, like it’s a question, when he’s the one who’s been fucking living here for three years.

“ _There’s a diner_ ,” Sol repeats, mocking.

Edward scowls at him, which is fine, because he has to straighten up to do it, and at least then his pants aren’t pulled so tight across his ass. “And I suppose you’re all—steak and potatoes and whatever, still.”

“Fucking feed me sushi,” Sol says belligerantly. “I don’t care. I’ll eat it off your chest.”

Edward goes pink _immediately_ , ducks his head and starts scrolling through his phone like it’s his fucking job. He mutters something about the diner hours, ducks out of the kitchen so he can leave through the front door, even though that means he’ll have to navigate around the broken step _and_ walk all the way around the house to the carport at the back, but, hey, at least he didn’t have to get any closer to Sol, so that’s great. Always nice to feel wanted.

(Turns out the pain meds aren’t affecting Sol’s dick much, so there is that to be said for them. Might as well have his dick ache along with his hear—everything else.)

🏚️

Sol is too dopey to bother snooping around the house while Edward is gone. He does vaguely consider making sure everything’s shoved inside his busted-up bag, but he’ll be sleeping on the couch anyways, so he’s got lots of time to tidy his shit. He doesn’t remember the last time he was on pain meds of any kind, and these ones are making him stupid enough that about all he accomplishes while Edward’s gone is briefly scanning the room in the hopes of finding a phone charger.

(There isn’t one in sight. Edward’s probably got everything in his office, a touchless charging station, and a little plastic dish to stick the phone in.)

The pizza, when Edward eventually comes back with it, is fantastic. Greasy, with the cheese dripping off the edges, and full of meat. Sol stuffs his face with it. He’s hungry as hell, and eating is distracting him from putting any thought into what he’s going to do now. It’s also keeping him from looking at Edward, who is standing at the sink and picking his way through his piece. As though pizza’s supposed to be eaten with a fork, as though Edward has some moral superiority for using a plate. Fuck him, honestly.

Then Sol looks up, and... _fuck_ him, honestly. Edward has that cute little furrow between his eyebrows, and he’s run his hand back through his hair enough times that it’s thoroughly messed up, and he’s undone the top two buttons of his shirt and finally taken off the tie, and it’s just… _god_ , Sol would absolutely have his way with Edward, fucked-up leg and all. Even if he can’t get it up all the way, even if Edward can’t relax enough to bottom, he’d be happy just to get Edward in his lap, get his hand in those fucking fancy dress pants of his, see if he still wears those same tight little boxer briefs that always cupped his cock and balls into that cute little bundle that was the absolute perfect size to fit into Sol’s palm. He wonders if Edward’s even fucked anybody in the last three years, or if it’s just been him, and the porn services he pays for but never seemed to use.

Sol wipes his mouth with a crumpled napkin, leans back in his chair and scratches his stomach. His foot is starting to throb again. Maybe the table brace he’s got it hiked up on isn’t high enough. “You in this house all by yourself?”

Edward looks up at him, guilt written all over his face, and Sol wants to kiss him, tell him that his stupid little problems don’t matter. “There’s room for you here,” Edward says. “I, uh. Looked at your text in the car.” He sets his plate down on the counter, grimaces. (He’s only half-eaten his single slice of pizza.) “I don’t, uh. Exactly remember the favour I owe you? But, uh.”

“Christ, you’re a fucking piece of work,” Sol says. He pulls his shoulders back, mimics Edward’s way of speaking. “ _If you ever need anything, let me know._ That standard procedure for all your breakups, then?”

“I never broke up with you,” Edward mutters, staring at his feet.

“ _I’m not willing to pursue this line of conversation_ ,” Sol mocks, watching the way Edward flinches. “ _This is my job, this is my work, and this is a hard line for me._ ”

Flinch, flinch, flinch.

...okay, Sol does actually feel a little bit bad about it now. “Anyway,” he says, slipping back into his regular accent. “I’m fine. Bounced back fine after you dumped me. Fucked a bunch of people.”

Edward lifts his head slightly, peers at Sol from under his hair. “Yeah?”

“Buckets of ‘em,” Sol says. Some of them were at the same time, sure, but if he can’t use group sex to artifically inflate his hookup count, when can he? Anyways, Edward looks interested, and Sol has half a mind to stand, come in close under the guise of bringing the pizza to the fridge. Brush against Edward’s hip. Smell his hair again.

He gets as far as standing before things go a little grey around the edges.

“Your couch,” he says, once his vision clears and he realizes he’s not making any moves tonight. He’s crushing the corner of the pizza box with his hand, but all it’s doing is making his fingers greasy—it’s not making him feel any less woozy. “You got a blanket for me?”

Edward’s hand is on his waist, and he’s tucked up under Sol’s other arm, which Sol doesn’t remember happening. “Can’t sleep on the couch,” he says. God, the way he _smells_. Sol could drown himself in it.

“Can so.”

Edward shakes his head, starts helping Sol toward the stairs. “Couch isn’t for sleeping on.”

Sol rolls his eyes about halfway, and then scrunches them shut when the movement makes him dizzy, keeps limping in the direction Edward’s taking him. “Spare bedroom, then.”

“Under construction.”

Sol laughs. “You don’t know how.”

Edward’s shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t say anything, just starts up the stairs, guiding Sol along with him.

“You got a third bedroom in this place, then?” Sol asks the moment they get to the top of the stairs. It’s mostly so he has an excuse to stop moving for a second. The skin of his calf feels all taut from the stitches, and his foot is throbbing in time with his heart, which is racing from Edward being so close. Or maybe from the staircase. Maybe it’s just the staircase.

“...no.”

Sol squints down the hallway. Bathroom to his left, the door Edward had been lurking in earlier just down from it. There’s a closed door on his right, and another closed door at the end of the hall. That’s three. Four, if you count the bathroom.

“Right here,” Edward says, his voice gone mulish and stubborn. His elbow is sharp on Sol’s side as he tries to shift Sol into the room, but Sol’s perfectly happy just hanging onto the doorframe a moment and looking.

It’s very much like Edward to have everything neat and in its place, which in this particular case means there are no personal possessions in sight, and he’s using some kind of expensive temporary wardrobe thing because there’s no closet in the room.

It’s very much _not_ like Edward to have downgraded to a queen-sized bed.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” Sol says. He gestures vaguely in the direction of the mattress. “Shoulda told me, I could have shipped your fucking expensive mattress out to you so you’re not having to sleep like the rest of us.” He glances sidelong at Edward, who’s gone red again, muttering something at his feet. “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

Edward glances up at him, bites his lip and gnaws at it a moment. “Couldn’t have fit it up the stairs,” he says, finally. “I’ll, uh. I can sleep...I mean…” He runs his hand through his hair, and then looks up at Sol, his eyelashes dark and his eyes soft. “I thought we could share. We’re grown-ups.”

“ _We’re grown-ups_ ,” Sol snipes back. “Yeah, the fucking picture of maturity here. Who screens their fucking texts?” God, it’s just—fucking miles of assumptions Edward’s made, and Sol would like to disabuse him of every single one of them in succession, but he’s tired, and woozy and it really has been a great bastard of a day. Edward looks like he’s gonna dig his heels in about it anyways, and Sol hasn’t got the patience for his shit right now. “Whatever, I’ll share,” he says. Deal with it later. Right now, he just wants to lie the fuck down. “Can you go grab the painkillers from downstairs? And my bag, maybe?”

“Yeah,” Edward says, immediately, backing out of the room and heading for the stairs. “Yeah, of course.” He always did like getting orders. Like the process of making decisions was too confusing by half, and there was clarity in someone else telling him what to do. Where the fuck he’d gotten the backbone to decide to move out to Red Lily was and remains a mystery to Sol.

He’s not unpacking it now, though. Now, he’s just gonna worry about the simple things, like getting his cargo pants off before he sits down on Edward’s bed. They’d wrapped his ankle at the mediclinic—must have done that when he was looking away from the stitches.

Sol lets go of the doorframe. It’s only a couple of hops over to the bed, and he sits down with a sigh of relief. Shoulda probably kicked his pants out into the hall, because right now they’re the only thing out of place in Edward’s room, but whatever. He wriggles out of them, shoves them down his legs, and bites back the curses when they get caught on his bandages. The bedframe creaks when he moves.

Edward will be back right away. The paper bag with the meds in it was on the kitchen table, and his bag is still where he left it by the entrance. Any minute now. So...it won’t hurt anything if Sol just lies down for half a second. He yanks a pillow out from under the bedspread, tucks it under his leg to keep it elevated. Lies back in his shirt and his boxers. He’ll change once Edward brings his stuff up. Take a couple more pills. Fall asleep on his side of the bed without doing anything stupid in his sleep, no matter how much he wants to.

Edward will be back any minute now.

Edward will be back…

🏚️

When Sol wakes up, it’s dark. His leg is throbbing, his mouth is dry, and Edward’s hand is under his shirt, curled into a fist next to Sol’s heart.

Oh. Okay, then.

He squints in the darkness of the room, which—isn’t as dark as what he’s used to. There’s moonlight filtering in through the drapes; enough to see that Edward is still mostly dressed too—his dress shirt is unbuttoned, but his trousers are still on, and his breath smells like pizza instead of toothpaste.

Sol’s heart does something extremely stupid, and Sol grimaces, turns his head. The painkillers are sitting on the side of the bed, and he reaches out his left hand, carefully removes them from the bag and snaps the lid open with his thumb. The noise is horribly loud in the silent bedroom, but Edward doesn’t stir at all, and after a moment, Sol just taps a couple of pills onto the bedside table, sticks them in his mouth, and swallows them.

There’s a glass of water there, too. It tastes different than city water—there’s a slight mineral taste to it—but it helps the pills go down. Really, he should move Edward’s hand. There’s no point in it being on Sol’s chest, as though Edward cares whether or not Sol is breathing, as though Edward gains anything by being close to him. Sol’s not needed here—he knows that, and it hurts, and it’s never really stopped hurting, but it’s not as though anything is different now than it was three years ago.

It’s just that Sol had nowhere else to go, and he hadn’t really given Edward a choice but to take him in. He’ll say as much in the morning, he decides. Borrow enough cash from Edward to get a bus ride back home, go to his ma’s a while. She’ll be disappointed in him, yeah, but to be fair, he’s pretty disappointed in himself too.

For now, he’ll just enjoy the feeling of Edward’s body pressed up against his, and imagine that Edward wants him to stay.

🏚️

“I want you to stay,” Edward repeats, stubborn.

Sol scrubs his hand back through his hair. He’s still wearing yesterday’s shirt, and Edward’s sheets are crumpled up in his lap to hide the irritatingly persistent boner he’d woken up with twenty minutes ago.

It’d nearly gone, too, only then Edward had come storming in with his tie tight around his neck and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up past his elbows and those _fucking_ tight dress pants he seems to be wearing these days, and set Sol right back to square one.

“You don’t fucking mean that,” Sol says evenly. “You took me in yesterday, that’s your good deed for the month. Good for you. I’ll be out of your hair by this afternoon.”

“You’re in no shape for it,” Edward says. He’s pacing at the end of the bed—back and forth, looking harried and stressed and absolutely refusing to look Sol in the eye. “You can’t walk and carry your backpack both.”

“That’s because your fucking step nearly did me in yesterday,” Sol counters. Fuck, he loves fighting with Edward. They always had the best sex after they’d fought about something. Hell, they’d had great sex even when they hadn’t fought about something too. Now that he’s thinking about it, some of the best sex they’d had was sex where Sol had just come up behind him and pinned him to the counter and started biting his ear and sliding his hand into Edward’s pants.

“Fuck,” Edward says darkly. He runs both his hands through his hair, tugs on it like he’s trying to give himself some clarity.

“Come here,” Sol says, low and rough.

Edward _looks_ at him, all puppy dog eyes and long eyelashes. His fucking _mouth_. Why the hell does he think he has the right to look like that?

“You want someone to pull your hair?” Sol continues. “C’mere.” He brings his hand out from under the covers, flexes it. “My hand’s not hurt.”

Edward wavers where he’s standing. Sways toward Sol, and then glances down at his watch and winces. “I have another meeting,” he says softly. “Like, right away.”

“Sure you do,” Sol says.

“Just—promise me you’ll stay,” Edward says.

Sol takes a breath, steels himself to just—set a boundary, and then keep it there. Like a normal person. Nobody in their right mind would stay here, anyways, when Edward’s just going to pull all the same shit that he normally pulls, and Sol will just end up leaving again in a couple months, just as pissed as he was the first time.

Shit like the fucking _lip bite_ that Edward is doing right now. Teeth right dug into his lower lip, like he’s showing Sol exactly what he wants Sol to do to him, and Sol would fucking do it, busted leg and all. Sol would yank him down on the bed and bite Edward’s lip for him, all he wants, would grope at his cock and at his flat little ass, which has featured in a non-zero number of Sol’s wank sessions since they broke up for absolutely no good reason at all.

“Fuck you,” Sol says, finally. “Go to your stupid meeting. I’ll fucking consider it.”

Edward nods, and rushes out the door. Calls back _thank you_ at the bottom of the stairs, as though Sol’s done him a favour, when it’s really just that Edward’s right—there’s no way Sol’s gonna be able to carry his bag and walk with his crutches at the same time. Plus, he doesn’t have enough money to be able to afford the bus fare to his ma’s.

🏚️

Okay, so he does actually have the bus fare. There’s a couple of crumpled twenties at the bottom of his bag, which he finds when he’s looking for deodorant. So he’s not trapped here, which is great. He also manages to find his phone charger, and get it plugged into the wall. Not the outlet closest to the bed, which doesn’t work, but the outlet that’s in behind Edward’s temporary wardrobe thing. If Sol has to hazard a guess, he’s gonna guess that the wardrobe has been there the entire time Edward has lived here, and that it’ll remain well after Sol’s gone.

He pours himself a bath, because there’s no way he’s going to be able to shower without getting his leg wet. Just like everything else in this house, it takes forever—there’s no damn water pressure, and even though Edward has a very modern shower fixture installed, Sol’s gonna bet it feels less like a shower, and more like being gently and delicately rained on.

So, a bath it is. He takes a couple more painkillers while he’s waiting for the tub to fill, and then strips off his shirt and his gotch, and carefully lowers himself in, leaving his knee hooked over the edge of the tub so that his injured leg stays dry. The hot water feels fantastic—at least there’s nothing wrong with Edward’s water heater—and he closes his eyes, drifts off into a half-doze.

He barely flinches when the door opens.

“Shit, sorry, I—”

“It’s fine,” Sol says without opening his eyes. “Come in and piss, it doesn’t matter.”

There’s a brief silence, and then Edward shuts the door. Sol’s not entirely certain whether he’s in or out, but it’s not like there’s a second bathroom—

“I can come back,” Edward says.

So he’s in, then. Sol gestures vaguely in the direction of the toilet. “I’ll keep my eyes closed,” he says magnanimously.

Edward hesitates again, but then carefully brushes past Sol’s injured leg as he comes into the bathroom. It’s like old times, really, except in the place they shared in the city, there were multiple bathrooms, and Edward would come by for affectionate reasons instead of practical ones. Bring Sol a beer, or the charger for his laptop. Come running like the time he did when Sol had accidentally dropped his phone in the bath while he was wanking, and cursed loud enough Edward thought something was wrong, and had raced into the bathroom just to get an eyeful of Sol with a greased up arse, a hard cock, and a dripping wet phone. The phone had been a write-off, but putting Edward on his knees on the bathmat and fucking his face had been great.

Sol lies there with his eyes shut, listens to the toilet flush, and the running water as Edward washes his hands. Waits for the creak of the door, only it doesn’t come. He opens his eyes.

Edward is leaning against the counter watching him, his face gone pink. “I am sorry about your leg,” he says, and it very nearly sounds sincere. “I’ll pay for everything, obviously.”

Sol sighs, flicks some water on his exposed thigh. “It’s not about the money. It’s never _been_ about the money.”

“I...don’t understand.”

“Then quit looking at my dick and listen, Edward.”

The blush on Edward’s face deepens, and Sol can just _feel_ the stupid decision he’s about to make washing over him. God, he’s a fucking idiot. This is why he hadn’t even entertained the idea of coming out to Red Lily with Edward, this is _exactly_ why—because once he was here, he wouldn’t be able to drag himself away, even when it was, inevitably, horrible.

“Okay,” Edward says, in that small little voice that means he’ll do pretty much anything Sol asks, the minute Sol asks it. Paired with the way Sol is feeling right now? Not a great mindset for either of them, but hell, at least the stupidity is mutual.

“When you decided to move out here,” Sol says, watching the exposed part of Edward’s neck that isn’t covered by his hair or the collar of his shirt. “You made a unilateral decision. I was not part of that process.”

“I—”

Sol raises his eyebrow, and Edward falls silent, his teeth back in his lower lip again. God, what is he on right now, lunch break? Either way, they’re wasting time having a discussion when what Sol should be doing is getting Edward to strip down, jerk his cock where Sol can see it. “You had clearly done research, because you had an entire pros and cons list about moving here, and absolutely _zero_ of those pros and cons took me into account. Stop chewing on your lip, I know what you’re going to say. _You’re in construction, you can work anywhere_. Maybe I didn’t _want_ to, Edward. Maybe I didn’t want to work in a tiny shit town. Maybe I wanted to head for the coast. Maybe I wanted to feel as though I was an equal partner in what I thought was a relationship. Maybe I wanted to be somewhere with two seasons instead of four. Maybe I wanted to head for the poles. And I would have had that discussion with you—but you weren’t interested in having it with me.”

“You _left_ ,” Edward says. His arms are crossed over his chest.

Sol wonders if he still has his tits pierced. It’s hard to tell through the shirt. “Yeah, to the same fucking bar that I always go to, literally a block from the flat. You could have come found me if you’d wanted to.”

“You could have come home.”

“Well, I’m fucking here now, aren’t I?” Sol snaps.

Edward’s eyes go dark, and he takes a deep breath, opens his mouth—and then his hand goes to his pocket as his phone rings.

“Better get that,” Sol says, sinking back into his bath.

Edward gives him a wounded look, and puts the phone to his ear. “Edward Little—yes, as per the email that I sent this morning—no, it’s part of the same ticket—yes, I’m at my computer.”

He closes the bathroom door behind himself on the way out, at least.

Sol sighs, nudges his flaccid cock with his finger. It bobs in the water hopefully, but to be honest, he’s really not feeling it right now. Not even with the guilty way Edward had looked at him, or the softness in his puppy dog eyes, or the teeth that he keeps digging into his lower lip or the way he crosses his arms over his chest when he’s upset, like it’s somehow going to make it so that Sol can’t pick him up any damn time he wants to—

—well, taking all of that into account, maybe Sol is feeling it, just a bit. He curls his hand around his cock, sinks a little further into the bath. With any luck, if he’s quick about it, he can get off before his injured leg goes numb from hanging out the side of the tub.

🏚️

By the time Sol finally hobbles downstairs—one crutch only, fresh clothes, and the leg of his cargos zipped off on the injured side so he doesn’t have to have anything brushing against the bandages—he’s fucking famished. He eats the remainder of the pizza, but it’s only gonna do him for a couple hours. He’s pretty sure he’s gotta eat more when he’s hurt, anyways. You know, so he’s got enough calories to burn on the healing process and everything.

Sol pokes through the contents of the fridge again. Honestly, it’s gross. Edward’s clearly been eating like shit for god knows how long. The cupboards are in a worse state than the fridge—full of pre-packaged shelf stable foods that have somehow managed to go off anyways, and a bunch of obscure cooking implements still in their boxes, which is grand considering that Edward doesn’t know how to cook. Also, there’s an upper and lower set of cupboards that have been tied neatly shut with butcher’s string, for some godforsaken reason. They’re the same fidgety knots that Edward used to put in things when he was stressed out at his old job, so at least that hasn’t changed, but why the fuck he would be stress-tying cupboards together in his own kitchen is completely beyond Sol.

It’s just. It’s fucking impossible. This is why Edward shouldn’t have gone rampaging off on his own. He’s fucking impossible.

Sol opens the back door, and hops out onto the porch. The back yard is—fine, really, if what Edward was going for was a garden that had been lovingly planted in the spring, and now is completely overgrown and unweeded. For god’s sake, he’s put _dill_ in, which means that the dill has made its inevitable migration from the west side of the garden all the way down to the east side, and is starting to work its way into the lawn. There is a barbeque, though, sitting on a couple of patio blocks next to the porch, so at least there’s that going for it.

“Hey,” Edward says from the kitchen, sounding flustered. “Sol, are you—oh, there you are.”

Sol turns, and Edward is _right there_ , still in his work clothes, with his hair sticking up from his hand going through it. Sol kisses him without thinking, inhales through his nose when their lips are locked. Edward smells fantastic, like the woods, and expensive leather, and old books. He makes a little startled noise when Sol’s lips meet his, and then just _melts_. His hands come up to Sol’s biceps, holding him tight, and his eyes close immediately, eyelashes brushing against his cheeks.

Sol pulls back. His lips are tingling, and his skin is warm, and his cock has forgotten to have a refractory period after his wank in the tub. Edward doesn’t look much better—his eyes are dark, his mouth is still partly open, and his breath is coming in ragged little pants.

“Thought you’d gone,” Edward says, voice rough.

Sol shakes his head. “Jus’ lookin’ at your back yard.”

Edward winces. “I had good intentions.”

“Oh, I can see that,” Sol says. “Fuckin’ road to hell out here, it is.”

Edward’s eyes light up, even as his cheeks burn red. “Hey, if you wanted, I could—”

Sol puts his hand over Edward’s mouth. “Don’t,” he warns gently, suffused with warmth and affection at the way that Edward just _lets_ him. His breath is hot on Sol’s palm, and he’s not struggling or resisting at all. “If you offer to pay me for things I would have done anyway, I’m going to be insulted. And I don’t want to be insulted. I had a very nice bath. I had a nice wank. The painkillers are...sorry, what was that?”

Edward’s eyes drop, and he mutters something against Sol’s palm again, his whiskers scratching the skin. Christ, he probably would give fantastic beard burn if Sol sat on his face for a bit. Once his leg heals up, maybe.

Who the hell is he kidding. The minute the stitches stop fucking pulling, Sol will ride Edward’s face into oblivion.

Edward presses his lips to Sol’s palm, and then leans away from him, his shoulders resting on the wall of the house to compensate for the fact that he hasn’t moved his legs away from Sol, not even a little. His eyes are fixed on Sol’s chest, and he’s still blushing. “I heard,” he says, matter-of-factly. “The, uh. The bathroom’s right over the kitchen, and the vents in these old houses, the sound, mmm...it carries, some, and you, uh. Talk to yourself, during. Still.” He glances up at Sol from under his lashes, and fuck, if they weren’t standing out in his back yard for all the neighbors to see, Sol’d have him down on his knees immediately, rub his cock on Edward’s face till he gets his mouth open, and then let him suck it.

“Fucking pervert,” Sol says softly, bringing his hand up and tucking Edward’s hair back behind his ear so that he can better see the blush burning on his cheeks. “Little voyeuristic reprobate, hmm? Could have told me how the sound carries, you know what I usually do in the bath.”

“Yeah,” Edward says breathlessly. “Yeah, I do. And I didn’t say anything.” He swallows, takes a step back toward the kitchen. “Didn’t even need the coffee, really, I just...I missed you…”

Sol hops forward, leaning on the crutch in his armpit. “You missed me, huh? Miss my big cock?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Edward says, his voice gone all soft. “Missed your nice big cock and those fucking heavy balls of yours.”

Sol shifts forward again, moving Edward back inside the kitchen. “If you tell me,” he says, his voice low and pleasant, “that you have another meeting—”

“I’m done,” Edward says immediately. “I’ll finish up after supper, they owe me time anyway, they—Sol, I just want—”

“Tell me.”

“—you, Sol, I want—can I suck your cock, please, I miss it, I need it.”

“Yeah, you want my big dick in your mouth?”

“I do,” Edward says, nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush to get back inside the kitchen. “Please, Sol—”

“No,” Sol says, and he grins wide, showing all his teeth, at the absolutely _wretched_ look on Edward’s face.

“But I—”

“Oh, you’ve been good, have you?” Sol says. He balances on his good foot, uses the end of his crutch to tug one of the dining room chairs closer so he can sit down. “Didn’t dump your live-in boyfriend when he didn’t want to move to Assfuck, Nowhere with you? Didn’t proceed to ignore him for three years? Didn’t screen his text messages when his life went to hell and he needed you? And that’s just the shit that has to do with _me_ , Edward. God knows what you’ve been up to with whatever other sad sacks you’ve been fucking the last couple of years.”

Edward’s face is crimson now, but when Sol sits down, he’s at a nice line of sight for Edward’s cock, which isn’t just hard—no, it’s _leaking_ , making a mess of his nice dress pants. Christ, he’s in a fucking _state_ , and Sol feels better now than he’s felt in weeks. Maybe the rest of his life won’t just be a long slide into nothingness and obscurity, because Edward still wants to fuck him, even if he doesn’t want anything else to do with Sol, because Edward’s hand was on his chest last night, because Edward asked him to stay—

“C’mere,” Sol says, and he holds his hand out, palm up, to make it _very_ clear what he wants.

And oh, god, the way Edward _wavers_ is fucking glorious, like there’s part of him that doesn’t want to submit to this, like there’s part of him that still wants to be in control about it, like there’s part of him that’s in denial about wanting to be taken hard and put away wet. He’d been like that in university, too, had actually gotten shirty about it when Sol had hit on him because _you look like a kin major_ , and Sol had just grinned at him, wide, and said _yeah and you look like you need a good hard dicking once somebody’s pulled that stick out of your ass_ and Edward had gone crimson, and then Sol had patted him on the side of his face and told him he’d see him later.

(And he had. They’d fucked on and off the entirety of Sol’s time at campus, and most of the extra couple years Edward took besides.)

“Do I have to,” Edward says, now, and both his hands are in his hair, and the wet spot on his pants is just getting bigger by the minute. Sol knows how he gets when he’s like this. He remembers, and, god, he missed it.

“Nah,” Sol says easily, wiggling his fingers. “You don’t have to, baby. You can just stand right there if you want.” He widens his own stance, curls his hips a bit to show off his cock, biting back the wince when he inadvertently puts pressure on his bad leg. “But I think you wanna come stand right here, and see if that cock of yours still fits into my hand, huh?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Edward says, and then he’s closed the distance between them, rocking his hips forward into Sol’s palm even as he puts his hands on Sol’s shoulders, leans in close. “I’m better than this.”

“No, you’re fucking well not,” Sol says into Edward’s shirt, and then he _licks_ the fabric at the same time as he squeezes Edward’s cock, and Edward gasps and makes a helpless little whining noise, humping Sol’s palm erratically.

Sol uses his other hand, starts untucking Edward’s shirt, enough so that he can shove his hand up there, and finally touch bare skin.

“Sol,” Edward gasps. “Sol, can you—please, I want—” Christ, his cock is hard, and there’s a moment where Sol isn’t sure if he wants to just make Edward come all over himself without even getting his cock out, or if he wants to make him wait.

“You fuckin’ kept them,” Sol says instead, his fingers finally brushing against metal. Bars, it feels like. “Your tit piercings. God, man. Give me your cock, come on, climb up on my lap.” He wants Edward’s cock in his mouth, but in the mad scramble of trying to get Edward’s pants off and Edward trying to crawl into Sol’s lap and Sol’s vague, background concern that the dining room chair isn’t gonna hold two fully grown men when one of them is messy-feral and his own control is fucking slipping, he’s not exactly sure how they’re gonna get there—and then it doesn’t matter, because Edward’s shoving Sol’s hand into his underwear and making little desperate sobbing sounds in Sol’s ear before he gasps, stills, and makes a horribly needy sound that he tries, fruitlessly, to muffle in Sol’s tshirt.

(It sounds like _missed you_ , but Sol’s not gonna count on his interpretation of that being correct.)

“That’s right,” Sol says, curling his fingers around Edward’s cock and working him through the last shuddering pulses of his orgasm. “Make a mess of yourself, baby, that’s the hottest thing—god, you’re good, you’re so good—”

“Fuuuuck,” Edward says, his voice all slurred. “I’m so sorry, I just—god, I didn’t realize—fuck, I didn’t even touch you—”

“Yeah,” Sol says, his own cock hard and aching and uncomfortable. “You didn’t, selfish little—”

And then Edward is on his knees, burying his face between Sol’s legs and scrambling to get his cargo pants undone so he can get Sol’s cock in his mouth like he wanted.

Sol inhales, sharp. It’s sudden, it’s fast, it’s not that long after his last orgasm and Edward’s not being that careful with his teeth—but god, Edward like this, desperate and messy, is fucking hot as hell. Sol puts his hand in Edward’s hair, pulls, reaches with the other hand to paw at Edward’s chest through his shirt, looking for those little metal bars because Edward always loved getting his tits played with. It’s a horribly messy blowjob, and it’s punctuated by the kind of enthusiasm that Sol hasn’t had in years, and it’s remarkably easy to just—relax into it, grind into Edward’s mouth, and then pull back right as he comes to paint Edward’s face with it, all over those thick eyelashes and his whiskers and his red, swollen lips.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Sol says, feeling dizzy and fucked-out and bone-deep satisfied. “Sorry, close your eyes a sec there—yeah, lemme just wipe off your eyelashes.”

Edward takes a deep, shuddering breath. He’s a fucking mess—Sol’s come is all over his face, there’s a tear-track on his right cheek, and he actually brings his hand up to wipe at his nose, which is how Sol knows he’s too far gone to care about how he looks right now. Still, though. Sol sucks his own thumb clean and then carefully wipes off Edward’s eyelashes, and the come that’s threatening to drip into Edward’s eyes. (Realizes, belatedly, that he’d grabbed Edward’s hair with the hand that Edward had come all over...so it’s probably good that Edward’s done work for the day.)

“There,” Sol says, softly. “You all good there, buddy?”

Edward opens his soft brown eyes, and stares up at Sol. “Yeah,” he says, a crooked smile just barely visible at the corner of his mouth. “I’m good, Sol.” He exhales, and then slouches against Sol’s knee. “Think I needed that.” He curls his hand around Sol’s good ankle. “Didn’t hurt you?”

It’s the first time he’s ever asked, in any context.

“Nah,” Sol says, ruffling Edward’s hair. “You didn’t hurt me.”

Edward nods. Closes his eyes, and rests his head on Sol’s thigh, and Sol just...lets him. They can talk about it later.

Right now, it’s the least lonely Sol’s been in years, and he doesn’t wanna cut it short.

🏚️

Edward doesn’t have a tv, for some fucking reason. Sol lies on the couch that evening anyway, with his leg propped up on the coffee table so his ankle stops throbbing. The blood had come out of the wood, at least, so there’s that. He’s flipping through _Heir to the Empire_ so he has something to do with his eyes, but honestly, he’s so knackered he’s thinking about just heading to bed.

He looks up when the door creaks—Edward, coming out of his office with his hair all messed up like he’s been tugging at it again. He shuts the door tightly behind him, and comes immediately over to the couch, sitting down, and then flopping over to put his head in Sol’s lap.

Sol blinks at him. Looks down at the back of Edward’s head, and then dogears the page he’s on—a page that’s been dogeared so many times the corner’s like to fall off—and sets the book down. “Things bad?”

“Emails,” Edward mutters darkly into Sol’s cargo pants. “Just fucking _constantly_.”

“Ah.” Sol lifts his hand, considers—and then sets it down on the back of Edward’s neck. Edward makes a pleased sound, and burrows his hand underneath Sol’s thigh. He never used to do this when they were together. It was either—they were fucking, or they weren’t, and if they weren’t, Edward was sitting on his half of the couch, or in his stupidly uncomfortable chair, just scrolling through his phone and claiming he was watching whatever reality show bullshit was on tv. They hadn’t cuddled. It’d been like being really good friends, except that the sex was fucking fantastic, and Sol got invited to the occasional social event that Edward was going to as long as it had nothing to do with work. If it had to do with work, Edward just did it alone, and made his decisions unilaterally.

Sol sighs. Like Edward’s decision to move out here in the first place. The fuck had happened in those three years that Edward fucking _cuddles_ now?

Edward murmurs something into Sol’s leg, and Sol stops moving his hand on Edward’s neck, because there it is again—and it’s hard to mistake this time.

“Repeat that,” he says anyways, because fuck if he’s making any decisions based on a thing he thought Edward might have said maybe.

Edward rolls onto his back, and stares up at Sol with those goddamn golden brown eyes of his. He’d gotten all the come washed off his face, but it doesn’t much matter, because that’s all Sol’s thinking about looking at him. “I missed you,” he says clearly. His face is pink, and his ears are red, and he bites his lip afterwards like he’s bracing himself for Sol to be a bastard about it, and—fine, maybe a couple of years ago, Sol would have been a real fucking shitheel about it, yeah. And if Edward had said it yesterday, yeah, Sol might have lost it on him a bit.

He can’t pinpoint what it is that’s shifted today. Doesn’t know if he wants to. He should be buying another bus ticket and heading out to his ma’s, is what he should be doing—but he doesn’t really want to, and he’s not even using the leg as an excuse. “The fuck happened to you that you can say that now?” Sol asks instead, and Edward winces, looks away.

And here it is, the good old Edward Little special—silence and avoidance for a couple hours, and then Sol can pick his poison—a beer, a blowjob, or maybe Edward will just fuck off for a couple hours, go back to work like he didn’t just come from there, sleep in his office with his headphones on, and by the time he comes crawling back to Sol, Sol’s willing to just let it go because his anger has always burned hot, sudden, and fast, burning itself out completely before Edward was done sulking.

“I moved out here,” Edward says, startling the bloody hell out of Sol. “And I guess I hadn’t really...thought it through the whole way. Like, I figured you would come after me? But you didn’t.”

“You’re fucking right I didn’t,” Sol says, without any malice at all. “I had a job, Edward. And long distance wouldn’t have worked for us.”

Edward sighs. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know. And I guess I had a lot of time to...think about things. With you.”

“Please,” Sol says. “Small town like this, handsome guy like you, you were probably drowning in dick the moment you showed up with that fancy car.”

Edward’s hand flies up to cover his mouth, but the shocked little giggle escapes anyways, and Sol raises his eyebrows, looks down at him like—fucking _hell_ , why’s he gotta be so damn handsome? His eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs, and it’d been so rare back in the city to see it, but it’s just _happening_ here.

Maybe he’s happy here, Sol thinks. Maybe he got in the habit of laughing. Sol expects the thought to be followed by a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, except it...isn’t. He just feels warm, like he wants to cuddle Edward back, and not at all like he’s missing anything. “Do you like it here?” he asks.

Edward’s face goes serious. “Something like that.” He wriggles on the couch a bit, getting more comfortable while he considers the question. “I, uh…”

“Like, you’re clearly working remote,” Sol says, because fuck it, might as well rip the bandage off on this all the way. “Do you like doing it from here?”

“Yeah,” Edward says, after a few minutes. “I do. It’s quiet here, and there’s no traffic. I can walk to the grocery store. It’s an hour’s drive to the river, and five hours to the forest. If I need to, uh.” He brings his arms up, crosses them over his face to hide his eyes. “If I need to go out and scream, I can drive ten minutes in any direction, get out of the car, and nobody will be able to hear me. The sunrises are fucking gorgeous, and the summer storms are spectacular.” Then he lowers his arms slightly, peers up at Sol. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t,” Sol says. He shifts, wincing when the stitches tug in his leg. “If you like it so much, and if you’re serious about wanting me to stay, I’m willing to try.”

“But your job—”

“Got fired,” Sol says. And then, because he doesn’t want to unpack any of that, not right now, he adds, “and evicted. It’s either this, or my ma’s, and she knows how to cook—you’ve got no bloody hope, if the rice you made this evening’s the best you can do.”

Edward blushes, bright red over his whiskers, and fetching as all hell. “I got distracted,” he mutters.

“Oh, aye,” Sol says. “Fucking gawking at me like you forgot what I looked like—I look like a man that fucked up his leg in your goddamn steps the other day—which, by the way, I’m going to fix, assuming you have a fucking toolbox around here somewhere.”

“I...do not,” Edward says.

“Christ.”

“Hey,” Edward says, sliding his hand up under Sol’s t-shirt and poking his ribs. “I’m not the contractor, here.”

“Yeah, well,” Sol says bitterly. “Not much I can do for you right now. You try telling those fucks in the city that I’m allowed to get my tools back, because they called security on me last time.”

Edward’s eyes flash, and he rolls onto his side, lifts Sol’s shirt and presses his lips to Sol’s belly. “Give me their contact information,” he murmurs. “They can’t legally do that.”

“What,” Sol says, reaching down and undoing Edward’s dress pants, awkwardly shoving them down his hips. “You a lawyer now too?”

“I know a couple,” Edward says, kissing wetly up Sol’s belly to his chest. “And like I said, I don’t have a toolbox, so I’m gonna need yours.”

“What the fuck am I gonna do with you,” Sol says.

Edward peers up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Wait while I grab lube?”

“Yeah,” Sol says gruffly. “Fucking _go_.”

🏚️

Edward’s so tight that Sol’s dizzy with it. He’s got his own hands behind his head, and he’s watching Edward furrow his brow and dig his teeth into his lower lip while he contorts his hand back behind himself, working his fingers into his ass.

“Come on,” Sol says, his voice hoarse. “My cock’s bigger than two of your fingers, and you’ve only got the one in there now.”

Edward exhales, shuddering. His legs must be aching—he’s kneeling with one knee on either side of Sol’s thighs, but Sol’s got big thighs to begin with, and he hasn’t pressed them together either, so Edward’s got quite the stretch just to make space for his hand. Christ, Sol can hardly handle it—he’d (mostly, with a few slip-ups) given up on orgies after the first year post-Edward, and the one night stands have been getting fewer and farther between, and as much as Sol wants to press one of his fingers up into Edward’s ass beside Edward’s own, it’s going to make for an inglorious end for him if he does. Still, though—his cock is hard as iron, and his balls ache.

“I’m out of practice,” Edward says softly, voice tilting up at the end like it’s a question.

“No gay guys out here?” Sol asks. He should have had Edward takes off his shirt, is what he should have done—now that he knows the nipple piercings are still there, it’s agony not to be able to see them, to see if he’s switched his jewelry, or if it’s still gold in them exclusively.

“Well,” Edward gasps out, his eyelashes fluttering as he twists his wrist, fucks up deeper inside himself. “There was—actually—”

“Don’t,” Sol scoffs. He reaches for Edward’s shirt himself, starts unbuttoning it. “The fuck do I care about some hick?” Edward’s wearing a fucking undershirt, so Sol starts hoisting that up with one hand, shifts his other between Edward’s legs.

“Hey— _ahh_!”

“Fucking _knew_ you were avoiding your prostate,” Sol says smugly. He rocks Edward’s wrist again, shifting Edward’s fingers inside himself. “You gonna bend over and show me, or should I wait and look after I’ve reamed you out good, once you’re all—”

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” Edward says. He pulls his fingers free, bats at Sol’s cargo pants with his wet hand. “Sol, I need it, I just—I need you to fuck me, come on—”

“Yeah?” Sol asks. “Hand me a condom, I’ll get you fucked before your little small town hick—”

The look Edward shoots him is so fucking _hurt_ that Sol actually draws back a bit. “No?”

“No,” Edward says, sullen, his face closed off and dark as the clouds that had drenched Sol the other day. “I mean, yes to the condom, if you want—no to the rest of it.”

Sol gathers Edward in close, holds him tight against his chest with one hand while he reaches down to get his cock out of his boxers with the other. “Shh, shh. I got you. It gonna be easier for you if I use a condom, or do you want me to slide in there bare?”

There’s a second where Edward hesitates, the tension in his shoulders still very, very present—and then as Sol’s cock rubs against the inside of Edward’s thigh (by accident, this time—they’re pressed so close together there isn’t much room for anything else), Edward exhales, and his body relaxes. “Can I have you bare?”

“Yeah,” Sol says gruffly. “Here, sit up a bit for me, just ease yourself onto it…”

And oh, _fucking_ hell. Sol had forgotten what fucking Edward Little was like—had forgotten how tight Edward is, even after fingering and plenty of lube, had forgotten that he won’t fucking slow down for anything, forgotten the way he tenses and bites his lip, working his ass all the way down Sol’s length until he’s right against Sol’s thighs, exhaling in a sudden breath. Sol has one hand on Edward’s hip, and the other on Edward’s bare thigh, and he regrets not having another hand to give his balls a good squeeze, keep himself from coming too early, but it’s going to be fine, because Edward has always been fucking shite at riding Sol’s lap like this—and then Edward starts to move, and Sol realizes that things have changed in the last few years.

Gone is the erratic rhythm, the way Edward used to fuck like he was out of practice, like he’d forgotten how it went. His legs have gotta be burning at this point, because he hasn’t put on any muscle at all in three years, but he’s powering through it, somehow, setting a steady rhythm and moving like he’d actually learned how to ride cock at some point since he dumped Sol. Maybe he’s bottomed for somebody else. More likely, though, that he actually broken out the porn subscription and took notes, filed them into some kind of a fucking—spreadsheet, or something, because he’s riding Sol’s dick like a fucking champ, and Sol’s going to have no problem coming from this even when he can’t really do much other than roll his hips.

Then Edward bends his head forward, his wet lips brushing gently against Sol’s neck before shifting upwards. “Yeah?” Edward asks softly, his teeth grazing the edge of Sol’s ear. “You like that, Sol? You like fucking me raw like this?”

Sol’s breath catches, and he thrusts up into Edward, ignoring the pain shooting up his leg when he puts more pressure on it than he should. Edward exhales next to Sol’s ear, and then keeps talking, interspersing it with kisses, with teeth, with decisive sucking on Sol’s neck that sets Sol’s skin tingling, all _missed your cock so bad_ and _nobody fucks me like you do_ and _christ you’re deep_ and _harder sol harder harder_ , and maintaining that nice steady rhythm the entire time. Christ, Edward never used to fucking talk during—he’d whine, yeah, and he’d beg for Sol’s cock, but this is way different than what Sol’s used to—this is a stream of filth interspersed with the begging he remembers, and the only thing that’s making Sol last a respectable time is the fact that his ankle and his leg are both still bloody _fucked_ , and Sol has to go along with the pace Edward is setting because Sol can’t fucking _move_.

“You need a good hard fuck,” Sol says, instead, and Edward trails off mid-sentence, pulls back and looks at Sol with his eyes half-lidded and his hair all messed up. “You heard me. You need to get laid out on the goddamn bed and railed until you come all over yourself.”

Edward squeezes his eyes shut, his face red, reaches down in between them to grab at his cock. His pace falters a second, and then he winces, starts moving again. “Y-yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sol says, bracing his good foot on the floor and awkwardly thrusting up into Edward as much as he can. “Fuck you till you’re fucking incoherent, because you’re driving me nuts with this—you’re so good at it, baby, you’re so good at it, you little fuckslut, so good at riding my cock—” He looks down between them, at Edward jerking himself off, puts his hands on Edward’s thighs—and, god, how Edward is even still moving is a wonder, because Edward’s muscles are twitching under his skin—

“ _Sol_ ,” Edward gasps, and his ass tightens around Sol’s cock, squeezing tight as Edward comes between them, the come landing in hot droplets on Sol’s bared chest and partly on his rucked-up shirt, and then that’s it for Sol too, pushed over the edge by the way Edward’s ass grips onto his cock just as much as by the unshed tears glistening in the corners of Edward’s eyes.

(When Edward finally relaxes and opens his eyes, one of the tears slips free, and Sol leans forward, laps it up. He swallows back salt, and the taste of Edward’s sweat, and feels something release in his chest, like there was something that he’d kept caged in there for three years, and it has only just now been set free.)


	2. Foundation

“Need your email,” Edward says a couple days later.

Sol looks up from the grocery list he’s been writing. “My what?”

“Your _email_ ,” Edward says, sounding aggrieved.

Sol shrugs, leans back in the dining room chair. “Hasn’t changed.”

“Okay, so…”

Of _course_ he's fucking forgot.

Sol sighs, leans back further—and then immediately straightens up when the chair creaks ominously. He recites his email—which is _exactly_ the same one he’s had since university, when Edward used to send him these cryptic little _u up_ messages at three in the morning before either of them had cellphones, and Sol had gotten used to keeping his computer speakers cranked up loud enough that he could hear the little _blip_ —and watches Edward’s thumbs fly over the touchscreen of his phone. “The fuck you need my email for?”

“Sending you something to send to your company,” Edward says, already backing out of the kitchen like he’s gotten what he came for, and he’s not sticking around for anything else. “Don’t change any of the wording or anything.”

Sol rolls his eyes, turns back to his grocery list. He’s gonna fucking starve if he doesn’t get some actual food in this house, and considering the state of the fridge, he doesn’t trust Edward to just go “get some groceries or whatever” like he’d offered to do. Take the stack of money that Edward had left on the table after they’d argued about it last night—it’s full of fifties, for one, and nobody uses fifties. It’s also enough money for Sol to buy about three weeks of groceries for two people, even if both of them ate like Sol—and Sol knows for a fact that Edward just picks.

He adds _meat?_ to the list. There’s alternative protein on there already—greek yogurt, milk, jerky, tuna, protein bars if they aren’t chock full of sugar—but it’d be nice to get some steak or something if it’s not sketchy. It’d be nice to barbecue a couple of times without freezing his ass off. It’s gonna be fall before they know it, and fall slides into winter faster than you can say _heating and hoarding is gonna cost extra_ , which at least gets him out of concrete work for the—

—well.

He’s out of _all_ work right now, isn’t he.

Sol tosses the mechanical pencil down on the table, and picks up his phone. Unlocks it, and looks at the email Edward had sent him for about three seconds before standing up and stalking over to Edward’s office. Well. More like hobbling. But still.

Sol twists the glass doorknob, and it pops off neatly into his palm as the door to Edward’s office swings open.

Edward looks up at him, trailing off mid-sentence. His eyes dart up to Sol’s face, wander down Sol’s body, and stop at Sol’s hand. “—sorry,” he says into his headset. “Yeah, I’ll get that sorted—I have to step away from my computer a moment here. Yeah. Yes. No, the tickets from yesterday. Do _not_ close the sprint. I’ll be back online before then, yes.”

Actually, Sol was mistaken. Based on the way Edward is blushing when he takes off his headset, he was looking at Sol’s crotch—not at his hand. Fucking tempting to just hop over on his good foot, shove his sweats down and grind Edward’s face right into his dick. But that would imply that Edward’s being good, when Edward is just being a liar. “The fuck’s this email you sent me?”

Edward’s eyes finally, belatedly, skip back up to Sol’s face. “What?”

Sol gestures at his phone with the broken doorknob. “I can’t send this email.”

“Why?”

“First of all, cuz they’ll know it wasn’t me that wrote it. Like, I know this is a request for them to give me my fucking tools back, but I’d have to look up at least two words in here to be absolutely certain, and I’m three times as smart as anybody that works there.”

Edward’s face softens. “Yeah,” he says, with a cute little crooked smile. “You are.”

Sol ignores it, because he’s not getting into Edward’s feelings right now, or the possibility that he has any directed at Sol that aren’t just lust and a desire to be humiliated. “And second of all, I don’t have a lawyer.”

“Well,” Edward says, shifting his legs under his desk. “First of all, it doesn’t matter who wrote the email. And second of all, you do have a lawyer if you need it—I just don’t think it’ll get that far.”

Sol scoffs. “Nobody will—”

“John Irving,” Edward says, like that settles the argument instead of just opening up five other ones.

Sol stares at him. “Like, John Irving from school? John Irving that used to lead those religious seminars in the arts building? Fire and brimstone fundamentalist John Irving? Did you give him my _name_? Fuck, Edward, he won’t help me, he _absolutely_ remembers that I’m queer from that time that I—”

“Yeah,” Edward says, putting his headset back on, his attention split between Sol and whatever keeps popping up on his computer. “That John Irving. Ugh, I might have to take this.”

Sol exhales. He looks back at the doorknob—should be a simple fix, really, but that would require a screwdriver. Maybe he can get—ugh, it’s a fucking Robertson, he can’t even use a butter knife. This fucking _house_.

“Sol?”

“What,” Sol snaps, looking back at Edward.

“He, uh,” Edward says, looking guilty. “John came out a couple years ago. I...you and I weren’t speaking at the time, I didn’t realize you hadn’t heard.”

“How would I have heard?” Sol says gruffly.

Edward grimaces, and manages to look fucking adorable doing it. “Sorry.”

Sol’s chest does that stupid clenching thing again. God, this is bad. This is _buying a small town grocery store screwdriver_ bad. This is _watching Edward avoid taking a call_ bad. This is _can’t gracefully extract himself from the conversation_ bad.

“It looks nice in here,” Sol offers, after a moment spent contemplating going after literally any dick other than Edward’s, and finding that he just doesn’t _want_ to. _Jesus fucking christ_.

“Thanks,” Edward says, giving Sol another one of those crooked little smiles.

“I’ll, uh,” Sol says, gesturing at the broken doorknob.

“Just leave it open,” Edward says, all in a nervous rush. “I’ll try to keep my voice down.”

“...sure,” Sol says.

🏚️

He gets an answer to the email almost immediately.

It’s pretty much a _fuck off_ , so he forwards it to Edward, and goes back to making his grocery list.

🏚️

The meat’s better quality than what Sol expected, so he buys a bunch of it—enough to keep him fed, and maybe put some weight on Edward besides. Local cow, apparently. He hopes it tastes good.

It’s a huge pain in the ass pushing a shopping cart and hobbling along on crutches, but his ankle is still shit, his stitches pull like a son of a bitch, and he basically needs to restock Edward’s kitchen from scratch, so there’s no point trying to shove everything into a basket.

There’s a high school girl running the cash register, and another one that bags his groceries. Not exactly what he needs—the giggling alone is making him self-conscious —but they cart all the groceries out to Edward’s car without him needing to suffer the shame of having to ask, so they’ve got that going for them.

“Sorry, which car?” the blonde one asks as Sol’s navigating his way down the concrete steps out front, and fuck accessibility, apparently.

He gestures vaguely. “The dark blue one.”

“The dark blue Audi?” she says, all chipper voice and big eyes.

“Edward Little’s car,” her friend adds, in a stage whisper.

Sol takes a deep breath, exhales through his nose. This is why he didn’t want to move to a small town. He fucking hates small towns. “Yes,” he says, resigned. “Please load the groceries into Edward Little’s car.”

Both girls erupt into giggles, and Sol stands there for a minute feeling extremely conspicuous, before he realizes—fuck it. If they’re gonna gossip, they’re gonna gossip, and Sol might as well have some of the damn details. “When’s the last time he got groceries, anyways?”

“Oh, god,” the brunette says, wedging a bag of flour into . “ _Weeks_ , wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” the blonde confirms.

“Fuckin’ knew it,” Sol says, vindicated. The girls are grinning at him, and yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have said anything—but whatever.

If Edward wanted to not be talked about, he’d have stayed in the city where he’s not the only one with a posh London accent.

🏚️

Sol takes his sweet time unloading the groceries, restocking the fridge, and finding homes for all the dry goods. He unwraps the tensor bandage on his ankle, confirms it’s both swollen and badly bruised, and then rewraps it. Lifts up the edge of the bandage to peek at his stitches, and immediately decides he needs a beer in him before he does any of that. Shit’s _nasty_.

There’s a couple of Pil in the back of the fridge, which is pretty fucking hilarious. Sol remembers how Edward used to keep craft beer in the side door of his fridge, specifically for Sol, but now all that’s there is cheap shit, the kind of shit Edward turned his nose up at when Sol bought it for him at the campus bar. (Waste not, want not—Sol had ended up fucking _hammered_ that night, with no hope of fucking, and Edward had been desperate for it by the time the following weekend rolled around.)

Sol opens a bottle of beer, grabs the dinky screwdriver he’d purchased—and if this thing lasts for any longer than one repair, it’ll be a fucking miracle—and heads for Edward’s office.

Edward’s still on the phone, of course, but he’s pushed his chair back from his desk, slouched down and spread his legs. He’s wearing fucking _moccasins_ , with soft-looking fur around the ankles. His tie is off completely, tossed across his desk, and the top three buttons on his shirt are undone. Even the tone of his voice is different—warmer, now, and less like he’s contemplating the merits of deliberately emailing a virus to whoever’s on the other end. Or a worm. Whatever.

Sol sets his beer down on Edward’s desk, picks up the broken doorknob. The hardware on it looks fine, and he swears to fuck if this is just a case of a screw wiggling itself loose—

“Mmmm, yeah,” Edward is saying. “I _know_ , they absolutely can’t. But you know how it is, right? Sometimes they just need a letter. Yeah. Uh-huh. Hmm, not sure if that’s a factor...hold on, he’s here, let me ask. Sol?”

Sol frowns, glances over.

Edward has his desk phone cradled between his shoulder and his neck, and he’s tilting his chair back further than he probably should, staring up at Sol with big wide eyes. “You think being queer had something to do with you being let go?”

Sol’s jaw tenses immediately. “No,” he says, immediately aware that it sounds defensive. “Wasn’t me being queer that was the problem.” He looks down at his hands, realizes he’s clenching his fists and makes an effort to loosen them. “Union stuff,” he mutters.

Edward scrunches his nose. “Mind if I put you on speaker?”

Sol sighs. Nods.

“John Irving here,” comes the prissy voice from the other end of the line. Same voice that was big into the moralizing lectures when they were younger. Same pretentious cadence.

“Yeah,” Sol says, resigned. “I remember.” Mostly, he remembers how hot Irving used to look when he was in the middle of one of his tirades. Fucking _watercolours_ and shit.

“Would you mind explaining the _union stuff_ to me?”

It’s not much of an explanation, to be honest—Sol has a decent head for dates and timelines, and everything he doesn’t remember he has written down in his phone, especially once he’d started getting pushback from the company and the union both and realized this was probably him on his way out. Edward is dead quiet during, just sitting there silently while John Irving’s voice comes over the speaker, asking questions about _when_ and _exactly what did they say_ and _do you have that in writing_ , and, yeah, Sol mostly does.

And then it’s over. John says he’ll be in touch, Edward effusively thanks him for his help. There’s still half of a broken doorknob in Sol’s hand when Edward hangs up the phone, and Sol turns it over in his hand, and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“How long did the two of you fuck?”

Edward goes a brilliant crimson. “It wasn’t like that!”

“Oh, come on. My leg’s killing me,” Sol says bluntly, “and I wasn’t exactly planning on serenading you with the story of how I got fired and blacklisted for demanding my union act like a fucking union. The least you owe me is a bit of honesty, Edward.”

There’s a horribly awkward pause.

“Oh,” Edward says. He leans, rests his elbows on his knees. “Uh. It was...a couple months, I guess. John didn’t, uh. My sister Jane came to visit the same weekend John was visiting, and he’d asked me to lie about it, so I did, but she, uh. Sussed it out immediately.”

“I’n’t she gay?” Sol asks.

“Yeah,” Edward says. He shrugs. “John was okay with being out, but not okay with...you know. Being _practicing_.”

“Ah, yeah, just don’t act on the gay thoughts.”

Edward picks up Sol’s beer, takes a drink of it. “Pretty much.” He gestures with the can. “Is the doorknob wrecked?”

“It has a loose screw,” Sol says. He considers a second, and then steps back, leans against the wall, and offers the screwdriver to Edward, handle-first. “C’mere. I’ll teach you how to fix it.”

Edward’s eyes go wide. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sol says, with no real malice, and a fair amount of affection. “Get over here, Edward. If I’m gonna stay, I need to know that you can at least handle a fucking screw.”

“Oh, I can handle a screw,” Edward says darkly.

“Yeah, and I’ll give you a screw to handle if you can get that flat little ass over here and learn how to fix the doorknob.”

Edward scowls, stands up, and makes a point of both finishing Sol’s beer and rubbing his ass up against Sol’s crotch when he gets situated at the door.

Which is fine.

Sol can wait for it.

🏚️

He lets Edward ride him while the casserole is in the oven, lies back in Edward’s bed with his hands on Edward’s bare thighs. Keeping looking at the way Edward’s lips glisten from Sol’s spit, and the way the evening light comes in the window and glints off the gold bars through Edward’s nipples.

Edward never used to fuck like this.

Maybe if he’d fucked like this three years ago, Sol would have had second thoughts about staying behind.

🏚️

By the end of the week, Sol’s ditched the crutches entirely, and just taken to limping around all morning, and lying on the couch in the afternoon with his leg elevated, listening to Edward’s work calls filtering through the slightly open door.

They’re all excruciatingly boring. Edward’s entire _job_ is boring, but there’s no tv, and there’s only so long Sol can scroll through Reddit on his phone before he wants to unplug from the internet entirely. He’d had half a mind to methodically go through the house with the shitty little drugstore screwdriver, tightening everything before it all falls apart around their ears, but he’d whacked the hinge pin on Edward’s office door down into place with the butt of the screwdriver without thinking and the fucking thing had shattered, sending little bits of plastic all over the living room. The handle’s all wrapped up in painter’s tape now—and Edward is completely silent on why he has that, but not a hammer—but Sol’s just not that desperate.

So lying on the couch listening to Edward managing a sprint, or whatever, is the name of the game. Doesn’t sound like much of a sprint to Sol. Sounds like more of a crawl. The endless phone calls are boring Sol to tears, and he’s just about to drift off, the pain in his leg be damned, when there’s a knock on the door.

Sol adds it to his mental list: _doorbell, fix_.

The knocking continues.

Sol half-opens his eyes, glances toward Edward’s office. Edward’s still talking, so Sol stands up, limps over to the front door, and opens it.

“You Solomon Tozer?” the guy asks, bored.

“Yeah…” Sol rubs his eyes, squints at the van. That’s fucking weird. He didn’t think couriers would actually drive all the way out here in the first place. Anyways, nobody knows he’s here, so there’s nothing that should be—

“Need you to sign here,” the guy says.

Sol looks down at the clipboard. _One (1) toolchest, all contents intact_.

Looks up, only to see the second delivery guy putting a ramp down out the back of the van.

“John Irving,” Sol says, a grin creeping onto his face as he scrawls his signature onto the clipboard being held out to him. “You magnificent bastard.”

🏚️

Edward’s door creaks as he comes out of his office, and Sol grins without turning around, adds _creaking door_ to his list of suddenly very manageable tasks.

“New...furniture?” Edward asks, sounding like he’s not sure if he should be pleased, confused, or upset.

(The first one, obviously.)

Sol slaps his hand onto the side of his black toolbox, and the LED lights in the hutch brighten in response. “Tell John the next time you talk to him that I’m so grateful I’ll blow him.”

“I don’t think he’d take you up on that,” Edward says cautiously. He tilts his head to the side, squints. “So, er. When you said toolbox, I was thinking…”

Sol turns, leans back against the chest. “Yeah?”

“You know,” Edward says, his eyes wandering down to Sol’s waist, and then staying there. He gestures vaguely with his hands anyways. “You know, about this size.”

Sol adjusts his toolbelt. “No,” he says, grinning. “That’s the size of the toolbox _you_ should have, considering that you _own a home_.” He pats his black toolchest affectionately. It’s five and a half feet tall, four feet wide, and a beautiful matte black. The piece of plywood it’s sitting on is fucking ugly—but he’ll get a nicer one once he goes to the hardware store. This one, he just bought off the delivery guys because he didn’t want to fuck up Edward’s floors. “This is the size of the toolbox _I_ have, considering that I’m a professional.” It’s also the reason he doesn’t own anything else that’s worth any money, but it’d been worth every penny—they might have been able to hold it hostage at his old work, but they hadn’t been able to get into it, and absolutely every tool he’s ever owned is tucked away safely inside, exactly where it’s supposed to be.

Well, every tool, and also the black toolbelt that Edward is staring at right now.

Sol grins, makes a point of adjusting it. It hangs low on his hips, because that’s how he likes it. He’ll be able to spend as much time as he wants, now, methodically going through Edward’s house and fixing all of his fucking shit. He can tackle the broken stair out front. Fix the carpet runner going upstairs. Figure out what the _fuck_ is up with the water pressure upstairs. Build Edward a garage so he doesn’t have to use a fucking carport and that ridiculous tarp over his Audi. God, even his ankle feels better, because now Sol can actually be fucking _useful_ while he figures out whether or not he’s going to stay. He’s leaning toward staying, though. At least he’ll be busy for a bit. “You done work now?”

“Yeah,” Edward says, vaguely. “Might go back after supper. Thought I’d come see what all the fuss was about out here.” His eyes flick up to meet Sol’s. “Maybe suck your cock, if you wanted it.”

_Fuck_ yes. “Course I want it,” Sol says. He reaches under the belt, tugs his sweats down. “Toolbelt stays on?”

“Toolbelt stays on,” Edward agrees, pulling off his tie and going to his knees.

🏚️

Saturday morning dawns bright and early for Sol—and for Edward’s cock, which is pressing insistently against Sol’s lower back. Sol squints at Edward, and then gives his shoulder a gentle shove.

“Hey, wake up.”

Edward scrunches his face, but doesn’t open his eyes. “Wha?”

“It’s Saturday,” Sol says.

“Weekend,” Edward mumbles.

“Yeah,” Sol says. “So I’m getting up. Want me to blow you back to sleep?”

“Blew you yesterday,” Edward says sleepily. “‘M tired.”

“No, dumbass,” Sol says, poking at Edward’s skinny arm. “ _I’ll_ blow _you_.”

Edward opens his eyes, finally, actually looking alert this time. “Oh. Yeah. Totally.”

“ _Oh, yeah, totally_ ,” Sol mocks, but there’s no heat in it. He rolls on top of Edward, starts kissing Edward’s neck. Christ, his shampoo smells fucking good. Almost as good as how Edward’s skin smells where his hair is damp against his neck. How nice Edward’s body feels under his. The pyjama pants he’s wearing are silky, and the drag of the fabric is great on Sol’s bare skin.

Sol props himself up on his elbows, lazily rolls his hips against Edward’s. “You like that, pretty boy?”

“Sol,” Edward objects.

Sol stops moving, tilts his hips so that he’s not-quite-touching Edward. “No?”

Edward blinks up at him, all half-lidded eyes, and eyelashes, and a face that’s too pretty by fucking half. “Yes?”

“Well, fine, then.” Sol lowers himself back down, ruts lazily against Edward while he kisses the base of Edward’s neck, and then a bit lower onto his chest.

“Thought it was just a blowjob,” Edward murmurs. “You don’t have to take the trouble.”

“Pft,” Sol scoffs. “Not blowing you when I’m not even all the way hard yet.” He bites Edward’s pec, just shy of the gold bar, and grins when Edward’s breath hitches, and he arches up against Sol. “Unless you’d rather I just got up. Jerked myself off in your bathroom thinking about how fucking hot you looked yesterday with my cock down your throat and my toolbelt rubbing against your forehead, yeah?”

Edward sighs, brings his hand up and rests it on the back of Sol’s head, encouraging Sol’s mouth back toward his nipple. Usually, it’s the kind of shit that Sol wouldn’t let slide, but it was a real good blowjob yesterday, so Sol lets it happen. Breathes nice and hot on Edward’s nipple a minute until Edward’s breath catches, and then latches his teeth there, worries into the skin while Edward gasps and writhes underneath him.

“There you go,” Sol says, his lips rubbing against Edward’s chest. “You know where you want my mouth, yeah?”

“Do it again,” Edward says. “Please?”

“That’s right,” Sol growls, rubbing his cock against Edward’s again. Edward’s pajama pants are damp, which means his cock has started leaking, and there’s going to be plenty to taste when Sol gets his mouth down there, and it’s gonna be fucking good. Edward has _always_ tasted good, like a posh boy, like money and privilege and all the things that Sol never had, like if he licks all of that off Edward’s skin, it’ll mean something, like if he absorbs enough of it by osmosis, he’ll be worthy of being seen with him, like he’ll have made it, somehow. “You need me.”

“Yeah,” Edward says, curling his fingers in Sol’s hair, and reaching for Sol’s bare ass with his other hand. “Yeah, I do.”

“Gonna fix your fucking stupid house if you let me,” Sol says, and he sucks Edward’s nipple into his mouth, tonguing at the piercing even as he bites down on the skin around it, hard enough to leave tooth marks, hard enough that when Edward eventually drags his little rich boy ass out of bed, he’ll stare at himself in the mirror and touch the places where Sol bit him, and he won’t be able to forget about it. He’ll have to touch his cock right then, looking at it, looking at the mess that Sol made of him. “You need somebody to keep it up, don’t you.”

“I do,” Edward gasps, his voice going all rough and ragged about the edges. “I can’t...keep on top of everything...too busy...work…”

“Yeah,” Sol says, “with your fucking theoretical job doing theoretical work.”

“ _Please_ ,” Edward begs, and then Sol shifts lower on his body, bites his way down Edward’s chest onto his soft belly, drags his tongue across the hair leading down to his pubes, and Edward sighs, arches against Sol’s face. “Again, again.”

Sol grabs onto the waistband of Edward’s pajama pants, yanks them down, and buries his face in the stubble of Edward’s pubic hair. Edward smells of sweat, and sex, and cock, and it’s fucking intoxicating.

“Hey,” Edward says, and he punctuates it with a tug to Sol’s hair.

Sol peers up at him, squinting until Edward’s face comes into focus. “Yeah?”

“Do you want, uh. Should I shower?”

“Fuck off.”

“No, really—should I?”

Sol sighs, rests his forehead against Edward’s lower belly. “You showered last night before bed. If anything, you smell like my sweat, because you’ve been latched onto my back all night like a fucking barnacle.” He drags his mouth down, presses a kiss into the crease of Edward’s thigh. “I like it, okay? You smell nice after showers, but you don’t smell like you.” He shifts his face, nuzzles against the side of Edward’s cock. “I want you to smell like _this_ ,” he says softly. He drags his tongue up on the length of Edward’s cock, laps the precome off the tip, and then looks up at Edward. Sol can’t do seductive, he knows he can’t—but Edward’s eyes are blown black anyways, so it’s fine. It’s working.

“Okay,” Edward says, all soft and quiet and embarrassed.

Good.

Sol gets up on his knees, braces himself with one hand next to Edward’s hip, and reaches between his own legs for his cock as he takes Edward’s into his mouth—and fucking hell, Edward tastes good. He’s wet, leaking, hard, and he twitches underneath Sol as Sol swallows him down. Sol gags on Edward’s dick, and lets it happen because Edward moans, and the sound goes straight to Sol’s cock, and it’s fucking great.

God, he loves this. He doesn’t do it, usually—has a bad track record of getting with guys that figure because Sol’s mouth is on their cock that they get to call the shots now, and that’s not how any of this works—but Edward isn’t like that, Edward just goes all pliant and grateful and exhales in little sighs with Sol’s name on his tongue, his hands grasping for anything of Sol’s that they can touch—his hair, his shoulders, the side of his face, Edward’s soft hand on the side of Sol’s face—

Something wells up in Sol that he wants, desperately, not to identify, but it’s too late for that now. He knows what this is. He knows what it’s going to be. He knows what he’s going to do. He lets himself gag on Edward’s cock again, tears coming to his eyes and thick spit collecting in his throat, drags his lips all the way up the length and lets it flop out of his mouth, smacking wetly against Edward’s stomach.

“Tell me,” Sol rasps.

Edward puts his hands over his eyes, grinding his palms into the sockets. “Don’t stop, Sol,” he says softly. He takes in a deep, ragged breath, and then adds, “Don’t go.”

Fuck.

“Yeah?” he asks, because he’s a fucking idiot, because he can’t stop himself from crawling back, because he wants to hear it.

“Yeah,” Edward says. “Please move in with me, Sol. I’ll pay, I don’t fucking care. Just—don’t go back to the city, please. Or stay with me if you do—I’ll fucking call, I promise. I’ll text. I’ll drive in on the weekends.”

“Don’t do that,” Sol says softly. “Ain’t nothing I wanna go back there for.” He shifts his hand from his cock to Edward’s, jerks Edward off light and fast, just the way he remembers Edward liking it. Maybe that’s changed. He doesn’t fucking know. He’ll figure it out, though. He’ll figure it all out. “Don’t be a shithead this time, huh?”

“I won’t,” Edward says, his voice cracking. “I promise, I won’t, I’ll try, I’m trying, I—Sol, fuck, sorry, I—”

Sol ducks his head and swallows Edward’s cock again, feels Edward start coming the moment the head of his cock rubs against the back of Sol’s throat. Sol works him through it, swallows his load and works his hand on the part of Edward’s cock that isn’t in his mouth, reaches his other hand between his legs and works his own cock too, stripping it efficiently, hard and quick.

“Fuck,” Edward says, and Sol pulls off, lets Edward’s softening cock fall against his stomach.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Edward, fuck.”

“Come here,” Edward says blearily, patting his own chest. “Come in my mouth?”

Sol crawls up Edward’s body, brackets Edward’s skinny shoulders with his thighs, braces himself on the wall. “C’mere,” he says. “Yeah, open your mouth—Edward, I fucking love that, yeah.” He inhales as Edward seals his lips around Sol’s cock, grabs Sol’s ass and tugs Sol forward like he can’t get enough of it. It’s like Edward needs it, like he needs _Sol_ , like this _matters_ —and Sol shudders, tenses, and comes down Edward’s throat.

Edward’s good about it—he swallows, pulls back to lap gently at the head of Sol’s cock, nuzzles him gently while Sol is coming down. It’s a lot. Not too much, though.

It’s actually kind of perfect.

“That’s enough,” Sol says gently, when it starts to get too sensitive. He pulls himself out of Edward’s mouth, shifts down the bed and kisses Edward, nice and soft and warm. Edward tastes like him, now, and he kisses Sol back like he’s not in a rush about it, like the timing doesn’t matter. “Go back to sleep, babe.”

Edward murmurs something indistinct, tugs the blankets up around his chin and flops over on his side. “...go?”

“Nah,” Sol says, pressing his lips against Edward’s temple. “I won’t go. Just gonna go take a look at that front step, alright?”

“Mmrf,” Edward says, his eyes closed and his face already starting to relax.

_Dumbass_ , Sol thinks fondly, followed shortly by _I love you_ , but he swallows that second part back, holds onto it for later. He doesn’t bother showering—it’ll just wake Edward up anyways, what with the shared wall and all—just drags on yesterday’s sweats, and slings a shirt over his shoulder in case the weather decides it wants to be an asshole.

His ankle’s not bad this morning, really. Now it’s just the stitches that are a pain in the fucking ass, itching and pulling every time he shifts his leg. He smacks himself in the side so he doesn’t scratch, keeps most of his weight on his other leg as he goes down the stairs. It’s gonna be a good day, he can already tell. He’ll figure out what the fuck he’s gonna do about that step. Check out the carport situation. Limp down to the hardware store and see what kinda terrible fucking shape everything’s in there. Maybe cook some steaks later, or some fettucini alfredo, or something like that. Something nice.

Sol scratches his bare chest, takes a couple steps into the kitchen, and just...stops.

“Don’t mind me,” the man leaning against the counter says. He’s dressed fucking impeccably for first thing in the morning on a Saturday—slacks, dress shirt, and waistcoat, with dark hair that very nearly falls down over his face, and the oddest shade of grey eyes Sol has ever seen. The stranger wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, lifts his bowl of granola. “I’m leaving right away.”

Sol glances down at the cupboards next to where the stranger is standing. Sure enough, the butcher’s string that was tying the handles together has been untied, and the string is coiled loosely on the countertop. “You’re...leaving right away.”

“Work,” the man says cheerfully, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “Tom Jopson, I work for the local paper.”

“Sol Tozer,” Sol responds automatically. “Edward’s...roommate.”

“Huh,” Tom says, pausing a moment before turning to the sink.

“What,” Sol says, slightly belligerently—but he’s fucking justified, isn’t he?

“Oh, no, nothing,” Tom says mildly. “Not really used to thinking about it that way, but I suppose I’m Edward’s other roommate. Odd, isn’t it, the way language shifts.” He rinses his bowl and his spoon both, sets them upside down in the sink.

Sol just...stares at him. It’s too early in the morning for this, but it makes a sick sort of sense, too, almost like… “Hey,” he says sharply, when Tom turns and opens the back door, like he’s aiming to leave. “Is this some kind of cheating situation? Am I the other guy?”

“Oh, god,” Tom says, looking like Sol’s just told some kind of a joke. “It absolutely is not, good lord.” His eyes are wide and round, and he looks, for a moment, like one of those haunted porcelain dolls that show up at estate sales sometimes. “No, Edward and I are very distinctly broken up.” He pauses a moment, and then pats the wall affectionately. “I just really like the house, that’s all. We got it together; what’s the point of dividing the assets so both of us can be holed up in some apartment, when we both wanted a _house_? I’m barely home anyway.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sol says. “This is so typically _Edward_.”

“Yes, well,” Tom says. He smiles, a little grimly. “Word of advice?”

“Yeah?”

“Stick to the sex,” Tom says, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “I wouldn’t recommend any emotional involvement if I were you.” He tilts his head slightly, smiles in a way that expresses more pity than Sol thought could ever be expressed in one facial expression.

Sol tenses, waiting for the followup question, but it doesn’t come.

“You’re welcome to the granola if you want it,” Tom adds. “Bottom cupboard. High protein, low sugar, if that’s your thing.”

“Right,” Sol says, because he can’t really think of much else to say, and it doesn’t matter, either, because Tom slips out the back door silent as can be, and is halfway down the street before Sol realizes there’s maybe a couple of other questions that he should have asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter goes up tomorrow. :)


	3. Substantial Completion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, it's me, and I've updated the tags. *fingerguns*

The granola is pretty good. Sol eats it standing on the back porch, trying to figure out where Tom got to, and whether or not he’ll be back. Isn’t much, out this direction—the house is right on the edge of town, the last one on the street, so it’s just the back yard, a fence that Sol will eventually replace, the back alley, and then a ditch full of prairie grass leading up to the railway tracks.

Kinda funny, really. There hasn’t been a train by that Sol’s been able to hear, and it should be loud enough to rattle the windows in the house if there were. That’s the weird thing about being out here—seems like he can hear pretty much everything, but there’s nothing to hear. He’s used to the city, where it’s constant traffic, conversations, and sirens in the distance. Here, there’s just...birds. _Individual_ vehicles, instead of a constant hum of _everyone’s_ vehicles. Feels like one of those montage scenes in the beginning of a horror movie, like everybody in town is going about their business while fucking zombies are crawling out of the graveyard. (He doesn’t even know where the graveyard _is_ , here. School’s to the southwest, he can just barely see the playground equipment. Maybe the graveyard’s in the other direction.)

After he finishes the granola, he wanders back inside. Sets his bowl in the sink next to Tom’s, and pulls his shirt on. Pads into the living room and opens up his toolchest, puts his belt around his hips and starts loading it up, running through his list of tasks to distract himself from the way his calf itches.

He’ll ask Edward about...the Tom thing, whatever it is. Later, once Edward wakes up.

Till then, he’s got work to do.

🏚️

Sol’s just about ready to install the new treads on the front steps when Edward finally emerges from the house, wearing one of Sol’s shirts, and a loose set of sweats that look like they’ll fall down if Sol so much as looks at them.

“Morning,” Edward says, his voice still thick with sleep. “Stairs look good.”

Sol grins. “‘Course they do.” Pauses. “So I met Tom earlier.”

Edward tenses, goes quiet.

“You should have said something,” Sol says, tucking his pencil back into his toolbelt. “I’d have been a fuck of a lot quieter this morning if I knew you had a roommate coming home.”

Edward exhales. His shoulders are still fucking tight. “Didn’t expect him back yet.”

“Well, he is,” Sol says. He picks up one of the new treads, carefully lays it in place on the risers. Looks smart as fuck, to be honest. “Handsome bugger.” He glances up. “Oh, come on, Edward, don’t be like that—the fuck do I care?”

Edward runs his hand back through his hair and leans against the veranda railing, which creaks forebodingly. He pats his pockets like he’s looking for something, and then scowls, runs his hand through his hair again. (He’s quit smoking, then, finally.) “I _just_ promised I was gonna stop being an asshole.”

“You did,” Sol says. He curls his hand, carefully taps the tread into place with the side of his fist, and then reaches for his impact driver. “Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Edward.” He glances up, and then sighs, reaches out and rubs Edward’s ankle, since it’s the only part of him he can reach. “Would you feel better if I told you about the sociopathic ginger I fucked after you left? He used to engineer all these group sex things.”

“Jesus,” Edward says, in a tone of voice that makes it unclear as to whether he’s turned on, or turned on and mad about it. “No, none of that here, just. You know. The gay equivalent of…” He sighs, and then sits down on the veranda, pulls his knees into his chest. “Uhaul lesbians.”

From Sol’s lower vantage point, he’s got a very nice view of Edward’s sweats pulled tight against his junk. Nice. “And then you didn’t follow through with the emotional commitment?”

Edward winces. “And then I didn’t follow through with the emotional commitment. How’d you guess?”

“Same thing you did to me,” Sol says. “Character consistency and all.” He sticks a couple of screws in his mouth, the points protruding out like toothpicks, and shifts over to fasten the other side of the tread. “Also,” he says, speaking carefully so he doesn’t drop any of them, “Tom said as much this morning. Awfully polite of him, really, to warn me off getting emotionally involved.”

“...yeah, that was deserved,” Edward says. “Can’t fault him for that.”

“Funny thing, though,” Sol says. “I think that ship has sailed.”

“...oh?”

“Yup,” Sol says. “Guess I’ll just have to suck it up.” He shifts down a step, gestures toward Edward. “Can you hand me that next tread?”

Edward does as Sol asks, and actually sits there and watches Sol install it, paying just as much attention to what Sol’s actually doing as he is to Sol himself, which is a huge fucking improvement on the disaster that was teaching him how to fix the doorknob.

Sol’s just finishing up the last tread when Edward’s phone buzzes, vibrating against the wood of the veranda. Edward startles, digs his phone out, enters a complicated-looking passcode, and then frowns.

“What?”

“Uh,” Edward says, and then he pauses for a long moment, his teeth worrying at his bottom lip. “I’ll just...respond to this.”

“Or,” Sol says, “you’ll think for two seconds about whether _this_ concerns me, and if it does, we can talk about it.”

Edward takes a deep breath. Exhales. Stares off into the distance for a moment before speaking in a nearly inaudible murmur. “Tom’s just asking if he’s okay to come back tonight, or if he should crash on his boss’s couch. He might stay a bit.”

“Well, he lives here, doesn’t he?” Sol asks.

“...yeah,” Edward says, and Sol can’t quite parse out exactly what his tone of voice is, which means that Sol’s just going to have to bug him about it again later.

“Tell him to come home, then,” Sol says. “Doesn’t fucking bother me any. I’m not fucking sleeping on your couch, though—we’re sharing a bed, and I’m not shying away from that.”

“Of course not,” Edward says quickly. “I wasn’t going to hide it.”

“Good,” Sol says. He stands up and stretches, watches the way Edward’s eyes flick to Sol’s stomach. “Move over, now—I gotta look at that railing you’re leaning against, it’s creaking like a son of a bitch.”

🏚️

Sol’s just finishing up tightening the railing when a vehicle pulls up in front of the house, parks. Sol glances over his shoulder, and then keeps looking. He doesn’t really know what he’d expected Tom to drive, but apparently, Tom drives a vintage Ford truck—brown, with a cream stripe running mid-body. Well, maybe not vintage, so much as it’s just fucking old—but there’s hardly any rust on it, and it’s clean, obviously well-loved and very much cared for.

Huh.

“You can use the front steps now,” Sol calls out, and Tom looks over, his face sharp and tight. He looks at Sol a moment, evaluating him, and then relaxes ever so slightly. Nods, slings a backpack over his shoulder, and sets a wheeled suitcase down on the sidewalk before going around to the endgate, letting it down and hopping into the back of the truck just as easy as you please. Alright, then.

Well, if he’s got stuff to carry, Sol can help him. He slips his impact driver into the holster on his toolbelt, ambles over to the truck. Doesn’t go so far as to touch any of Tom’s things, but at least from the sidewalk, he can see that Tom’s shuffling around banker’s boxes in the back—three of them, stuffed to the brim, and with ratchet straps wrapped around them to keep them secured. He watches as Tom loosens the straps, wrapping them in on themselves quickly and efficiently, and then moves all three boxes to the endgate with no visible effort whatsoever.

“Want a hand?” Sol asks.

Tom raises his eyebrow. “Sure, do you want to be the hero, or do you want me to be the hero?”

“I’ll be the hero,” Sol says immediately.

“Perfect,” Tom says. “You can take these boxes, then.” He hops off the endgate, and stashes the ratchet straps back in the front of the vehicle while Sol stacks the boxes on top of each other.

They’re heavy as fuck, to be honest, but he’ll be damned if he’s taking two trips. He grimaces through the sharp stab that shoots through his ankle, and then flexes his biceps, waits for Tom to shut the endgate and grab his suitcase before they start walking to the house.

“Steps look good,” Tom says.

“Damn right.”

“You sure you don’t want me to take those boxes?”

“Nope.”

“You’re limping,” Tom says, observant.

“Well, yeah,” Sol says. “On account of I put my fucking foot through Edward’s shitty step when I got here, sprained my ankle, and sliced up my calf. Got fucking stitches, if you can believe it, and I’ll probably have a nasty scar.”

“I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” Tom says.

“Oh, yeah, real handsome,” Sol grumbles. He glances at Tom sidelong.

Tom’s saying absolutely nothing, but there’s a little twitch at the corner of his mouth. Sol can see why Edward liked him. Edward always did like quiet men: organised, calm, whip-smart, together in all the ways Edward isn’t. Sol’s always been a bit of an exception, and he’s fine with that.

Tom holds the door open for Sol, gestures to the chairs by the window. “You can just set them down there.”

Sol grunts an acknowledgement, manages to set the boxes down gracefully without dropping them. The door to Edward’s office is closed, because of course it is. Sol lifts his foot, rotates his ankle, and then hikes the leg of his sweats up to scratch at the gauze while he watches Tom scan the room, taking in the changes—mostly Sol’s toolchest, Edward’s old laptop, which Sol has been using to watch movies in the evenings, and—

—oh, for _fuck’s_ sake. There’s also a set of Sol’s boxers on the floor, half kicked under the couch. Charming as fuck, that. Tom absolutely notices them, too, because he glances back at Sol, rakes his eyes over Sol’s body before he narrows in on Sol’s leg.

“It itches,” Sol says, petulant.

Tom shrugs a shoulder. “How long have the stitches been in?”

“Fuck if I know—a week? Two?”

“Well, there’s a simple solution to that, then,” Tom says, grabbing the handle of his suitcase.

“Yeah, stop scratching.”

“Or a good set of scissors,” Tom says. “Come on upstairs, yeah?”

Sol doesn’t even think about it—it’s not like he really wanted to go back to the clinic anyway, and he’d do just about anything to be done with the itching and the way the fucking stitches pull when he moves. He just follows Tom up the stairs, idly watching his ass and wondering if Edward bothered to notice, or if he was just more about Tom’s cock. Probably a decent cock, considering Edward actually went in with him on a house.

Tom goes immediately to the door on the right side of the hall, opens it up and sets his suitcase inside.

“Edward told me that room was under construction,” Sol says.

Tom looks back at him, eyebrow raised. “I painted last summer?”

“Oh, for _fuck’s_ sake,” Sol scoffs. “I thought he meant it was taken down to the studs.”

“Oh, no,” Tom says. He shuts the door again before Sol can get a good look inside—he just gets a flash of pale blue paint, brilliant white wainscotting, and a grey comforter on a neatly made bed. “In here, please.”

The _here_ in question is the mysterious third door at the end of the hall, the one directly next to Edward’s bedroom door that Sol had assumed was a closet. It’s not—what it is, instead, is a tiny little sewing room, with some machines set up on collapsible plastic tables, and an eclectic collection of used bookshelves and dressers, storing everything from fabric to books to thread.

“Have a seat,” Tom says, all business. He gestures at the swivel chair in front of one of the machines, and then leans over the table and picks a tiny wee pair of scissors and a set of tweezers out of an empty coffeecan. “I’ll just go sterilize these.”

The floorboards creak as Sol steps forward. He sits where he’s shown, looks around the room while Tom steps out, heads back down the stairs. Sol doesn’t know shit about sewing, but the amount of sheer _stuff_ that’s been crammed into the room is ridiculous. He’s seated in front of an off-white metal sewing machine with _SINGER_ across the front. Beside that is another machine with about eight spools loaded into it, the threads flying up and around the metal supports like the lines on a ship. And there’s yet another machine past that—curved, feminine black metal, with gold details, and a flywheel on the end. It looks complicated as fuck. Sol wonders if Tom sews his own clothes, if Edward ever used to come up here when Tom was sewing, wrap his arms around Tom’s waist and rest his chin on Tom’s shoulder, if Tom ever turned and—

There’s a faint exclamation from downstairs, and Sol tilts his head, listens. The sound is...drifting through the vents, apparently.

“—didn’t know you were...”

“...why I texted, Edward.”

“Right, no, I know, I just…” The rest of the sentence is lost, and fucking Edward, of course he won’t keep his voice raised long enough for Sol to finish eavesdropping. “—Sol uncomfortable.”

“He seems fine,” Tom says easily, his voice becoming clearer as he moves back to the stairs.

“I promised him,” Edward says, “that…”

Tom says nothing, but the stairs creak.

“—there’s just,” Edward is saying. “A lot of...it’s delicate, and I just think...”

Sol rolls his eyes, reaches out to the black and gold machine to touch the belt on the wheel. It’s an odd fucking thing—looks like a round rope, but it feels like—

“Do not touch that,” Tom says softly, and Sol jolts, turns around to find Tom just standing there, staring at him.

He’d entered the room completely silently.

“Sorry,” Sol says. He’s not, really—he’s got a gentle touch, even though his fist looks like a bludgeon. It’s just deceiving, that’s all.

Tom’s face doesn’t change, except that it softens, slightly, when Edward comes into the room behind him. Just something with his jaw—because his eyes are still sharp as flint.

“Alright,” Sol says. He yanks the leg of his sweats all the way up, hoping to get Tom back on task before he decides he’d rather just hang Sol out to dry and let him scratch himself to death. “Let’s get ‘er done.”

Tom nods curtly, pulls a stool out from underneath one of the tables, and gestures to the surface. “Up here.”

Sol sticks his leg up. He has every intention of ignoring Edward, right up until Tom snaps on a set of gloves and reaches for the medical tape holding the gauze in place, and then Sol’s eyes slide right on over to where Edward is standing in the open doorway, hugging himself, and with posture so tight it looks like he’s got a stick rammed all the way up his ass that’ll be visible in the back of his throat as soon as he opens his mouth.

“It’s fine,” Sol says, in an attempt to calm Edward down. _He’s_ fine, obviously. It’s just Edward that needs calming. “I was about to scratch my fucking skin off.”

Edward’s eyes flick over to Tom, and then flick, just as sudden, back to Sol, before dropping down to his feet.

Sol files that away, and then winces as Tom rips the medical tape off with a quick pull.

“Ned,” Tom says, in a tone that leaves no room for discussion. “The garbage can by the door.”

Edward retrieves it, holds it out for Tom. He’s clearly been on at least one video call since this morning—he’s still wearing sweatpants, but he’s got a dress shirt and a tie on to go with it. That being said, Sol’s pretty sure that the dark shadow underneath the shirt is the t-shirt of Sol’s he’d been wearing earlier.

(It’s a nice look on him, and the tie he’s wearing would be nice for Sol to wrap around his hand while he pins Edward up against the wall, encourages him to hump Sol’s palm to get off. Sol wonders if Tom would want to watch. It’s not like Sol’s unfamiliar with group sex. He’d certainly had enough of it while he and Edward were broken up.)

“You did do a number on yourself here,” Tom says, clinical and curious both.

“Yeah,” Sol says gruffly. “Some fucking idiot’s sign had flipped up so I couldn’t see it, and I weigh a fair bit more than the two of you, so the rotten wood didn’t have a hope.”

“Huh,” Tom says. “Shame nobody had caution tape.”

Edward winces, his face going red.

Sol grins. Christ, shame looks good on Edward. He glances down his leg, and then immediately looks away again—Tom’s bent over it with little golden scissors in one hand, and the pointed tweezers in the other, looking too competent by half.

It’s easier to look at Edward, anyway. The flurry of expressions going across his face is _fascinating_ —shame through to tension through to irritation, and all the while glancing at Sol from under his lashes, as though he expects Sol to say something about it, blow it all out in the open.

No sooner does Sol think the thought than it becomes immediately very, very tempting. After all, it’s better to get everything out at once, figure out where everybody stands. The last thing Sol needs is something like what happened last time, where he figured he was, you know, The Guy, only to figure out that the little rat ginger was married to somebody else, and the things he’d said to Sol didn’t mean shit once he’d gotten Sol under his thumb.

“So,” Sol says.

Edward looks over at him.

Tom just reaches out with one gloved hand, uses the back of it to adjust his sewing light so it’s illuminating the stitches on Sol’s calf.

“Were the two of you still fucking?”

Edward tightens immediately, but instead of clamming up, he just mumbles “sort of,” at the same time as Tom says, without looking up, “Off and on.”

“Knew it,” Sol says, smug, and then he winces as the sharp tips of Tom’s scissors rest against his skin, looks away as the little rhythmical _snick snick_ sounds start.

“Not anymore,” Edward hastens to add.

Sol looks at Tom to make sure that Tom is absorbed with his sharp little scissors and his tweezers, and then turns back to Edward and raises his eyebrows, mouths _no?_

Edward blushes a brilliant red, and looks away.

When Sol looks back at Tom, he could swear the corner of Tom’s mouth is quirked again—but it’s hard to tell, and anyways, he’s better off not watching Tom pick at his leg like that.

Better if he keeps his eyes on Edward.

🏚️

Sol is staring in the mirror, debating shaving his chest—or maybe just his armpits, or maybe he’d be better off tidying up his junk—when he hears Edward’s voice, clear as day.

“Look, I was just wondering how long you were going to...when you were going to be back.”

Sol hesitates, turns his head—but the bathroom door is still closed, and he didn’t hear the stairs creak, which means that Edward hasn’t come up. So he’s not talking to Sol, then, he’s talking to—

“As per my text messages,” Tom says levelly, “I don’t know.”

“No, no, I know,” Edward says. “I read them. That’s why I responded. I just...it’s cool, it’s fine, I just wanted to know...your schedule. When you’ll be back.”

“And gone,” Tom notes clinically.

There. The sounds are coming from Sol’s feet, which means—they’re filtering up through the vents. Tom and Edward must be in the kitchen, and the sound travels _perfectly_.

Guess he’s shaving his chest, then.

“It’s not _like_ that,” Edward is saying, chastened.

Sol expects Tom to snap back, and maybe it’ll escalate into a real fight—but instead, there’s a long pause, and then Tom’s quiet, even voice.

“I’m leaving on Monday. You don’t need to mind me—I’ll stay out of your way, both of you.”

“No,” Edward says, frustrated. “I mean—yes, fine, I’m not trying to stop you—I’m not trying to kick you out of the house either, I just...when will you be back, after Monday?”

“I don’t know,” Tom repeats, with a slightly frantic edge to his voice. “If a story breaks—”

“I’ve never tried to get between you and your work,” Edward says, sullen. “You know that.”

Tom’s answering response is so quiet that Sol can’t make out the words. He frowns, looks down at the bathroom counter, and then just...flicks the plastic safety guard for the razor onto the floor, kneels down by the vent, cocking his head to listen.

“...that hurts,” Edward says, softly. “Does that make you feel better?”

“I’m not trying to feel _better_ ,” Tom says, his voice tight. “I’m trying to set boundaries.”

“I respect—”

“ _Edward_.”

Silence, then.

Sol shifts on the cold bathroom floor, props his bad leg up on the toilet so that his ankle quits aching. At least the stitches are out now. Also, the tiles are no hell in this room either. He’d better figure out if Tom’s the one who put them in, or if they irritate him too.

“You can’t,” Tom says, and then he falls silent again for a moment before starting again. “You mean it with Sol, yeah?”

Sol doesn’t hear Edward’s response—just a ragged breath that makes it sound as though Edward has moved, in the meanwhile. Like he’s closer to Tom, now. Sol wonders if they’re touching. Hopes they are. Then he wonders what the fuck’s going on in his head that he thinks that, and reaches up for the edge of the counter, hauls himself back to his feet. Edward can just deal with Sol’s body hair as it is. He should really be in bed.

Sol rinses off the razor, leaves it to dry, makes a point on stepping on the creaky board in the hallway. It doesn’t much matter, though—he can still hear Edward’s rough _yeah_ floating up the stairs from the kitchen.

🏚️

“Got a question for you,” Sol murmurs against the back of Edward’s neck. They’re lying in bed, and have been for a half hour or so. It’s a jerk move on Sol’s part—Edward was damn near asleep, but Sol’s not anywhere close to it, and he just wants to _know_.

“Hmm?” Edward murmurs sleepily.

“How long’s it been since Tom was here?”

Edward’s breathing catches a moment before he sighs, rolls over onto his back, and hugs himself. “Five weeks. Big story across the border.”

“Ah,” Sol says. He shifts down in bed a bit, nuzzles against Edward’s arm. “You fuck then? For old time’s sake?”

“A bit,” Edward hedges. Then he sighs. “A lot. It was...a kink thing. It’s complicated. There were...uniforms involved.”

“Uniforms, huh?” Sol lets the image unfurl in his mind—Edward in an RAF uniform, as a WWII officer, in a navy uniform with gold buttons and those little tassel things on the shoulders.

“It’s stupid,” Edward says. Sighs. “It was going amazing, wasn’t awkward at all. Then I told him I missed him mid-scene.”

Sol sucks his teeth, and Edward chuckles, dark and quiet.

“Yeah, I know. He called the safeword on the whole thing. We’d been broken up for...three, four months. Half a year. He could tell you the date, exactly. I just kept...conveniently forgetting about it, until then.”

“Dummy,” Sol says affectionately, and then he throws his arm across Edward’s chest, rubs his face on Edward’s shoulder.

They lie there in silence for a few minutes. Sol’s getting pretty close to falling asleep, but he can feel Edward’s heart beating, feel the tension in his shoulders. That won’t do—Edward only sleeps in two days a week, and if he’s up until four am stressing, he’ll just go close himself in his office the minute the sun rises, and he’ll start work on Monday wound tighter than he had been on Friday.

“Oh,” Sol says. “I forgot to tell you. I bottom sometimes, now.”

“...pardon?”

“Yeah,” Sol says. He yawns, ends up with some of Edward’s hair in his mouth, pushes it out with his tongue.

“Thought when you said group sex, you’d be the, you know. The top,” Edward says. “For everybody.”

“Oh, I was,” Sol says. “It was a whole thing, though. With the cult leader.”

“The _what?_ ”

“Get me drunk sometime,” Sol murmurs, gently turning Edward over so he’s on his side, and curling up against him so Edward can be the little spoon. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

🏚️

Sunday dawns nice and early. Sol misses the sunrise—he’s still wrapped around Edward, dead asleep, and for once, his ankle doesn’t hurt, and his stitches don’t itch. By the time he pulls himself out of bed, it’s pleasantly mid-morning. He yanks on a set of gym shorts and a sleeveless shirt with big loose armholes. The shirt’s mostly for Tom’s benefit.

(If he’s perfectly honest about it, the loose armholes are for Tom’s benefit too.)

The kitchen is pristine when Sol gets downstairs—every surface clean, the tap sparkling and gleaming, the windows washed. He peers out the back door—and sure enough, there’s Tom, with his head down, methodically uprooting all of the dill in the garden. Sol will just...wait on the mowing, then.

He goes for a run instead, his ankle wrapped tight, and his feet crammed into a pair of Edward’s old shoes he’d found under the stairs. The sidewalks aren’t very well maintained—crumbling concrete and great big cracks—but the roads are pretty much empty, so Sol just runs on those. It’s nothing like the feeling he used to get lifting—but, then, the gym’s where the little rat had recruited him into a sex cult, and Sol hasn’t really been back since.

(In retrospect, he’s not even sure the rat had a membership there—Sol had seen his card, once, by mistake, and while the names matched, the person on the picture ID didn’t look anything like the man Sol knew, even if he squinted.)

It’s a small town—Sol goes the entire length of main street one direction, loops around to the other end of town, and then comes back on main street again on the way home. Looks like pretty near everyone that’s awake is at one of the two churches, because the rest of the town is deserted. He’s got nothing in particular to think about as he runs, which means he spends most of his time thinking about Edward. Edward in his dress shirt and tie, Edward in Sol’s sweatpants, Edward bare-ass naked with the sunlight glinting off his nipple piercings.

Then he comes home, all covered in sweat. Takes his shoes off on the veranda, and then his socks as well, takes off his shirt and scrubs most of the sweat off before stepping inside—where Tom glances up from the paper he’s reading, raises an eyebrow, and says absolutely nothing.

Great, because now as Sol climbs the stairs, conscious of how sweaty his shorts are and how they’re clinging to his ass, he’s thinking about Tom, too, and how Tom might have thought about Edward.

Probably fondly, if the tone of last night’s argument is anything. Maybe not that often, but that’s fine, Sol’s probably devoted more than enough thought to Edward over the years to make up for anyone else who didn’t.

Then Sol opens the bedroom door, and all thoughts of Tom immediately vanish from his mind, replaced by the flashes of Edward’s body that he sees in the flurry of sheets Edward is rapidly tugging over himself.

“Sol,” Edward says breathlessly, his face red. “I didn’t—fuck, sorry.”

Sol grins at him. “Don’t apologize to me, babe.” He gestures at Edward’s hand, which is still under the covers, curled around behind himself. “You want a hand with that?”

“Shhh,” Edward says, blushing harder even as his eyes go wide and fever-bright. “We’re not alone in the house.”

“Damn right we’re not,” Sol says, his voice soft. “But I think it’s you that’s got to keep your voice down—I know how you get when you have a couple of fingers up your ass. All vocal and pretty about it, yeah?”

Edward exhales, ragged. “Y-yes?”

“That’s right,” Sol says, dropping his shirt and socks on the floor. He tugs his shorts and his underwear off. Stretches, considers Edward for a moment, and then makes a show of crouching down, picking the underwear back up, and carefully balling them up in his palm.

(The added benefit of crouching is that the wide stance finally unsticks his balls from his thigh, because even going easy on the run had made him sweaty.)

Sol displays the balled-up underwear, wiggles his fingers. “Can you be quiet, Edward, or do you need some help?”

Edward’s lips move, but no audible language makes it out of his mouth.

“You need some help, yeah?” Sol asks, nice and gentle, and when Edward nods—christ, Sol’s cock immediately goes from vaguely contemplating the possibilities of sex to iron-hard, ready to withstand all the tension Edward’s ass is going to throw at him.

“I need some help,” Edward says, quiet, small, hopelessly turned on.

“I’ve got you,” Sol says, standing up, and reaching behind him to very firmly shut the door. “You can leave it all to me, sweetheart. I’ll make sure nobody can overhear how desperate you are.”

🏚️

(The underwear works pretty well, to be honest. Admittedly, they’re sopping wet with Edward’s drool by the time all is said and done—but it’s two orgasms for Edward, and one for Sol that comes on brilliantly sharp and leaves him languid enough afterward that he actually dozes for a bit, sprawled out naked on the sheets with Edward’s come drying on his thigh. All in all, it’s a pretty good way to spend a Sunday morning.)

🏚️

Sol mows the lawn later that afternoon, once Tom has left the house wearing, of all fucking things, Wranglers and cowboy boots. It’s hot as shit, but Sol doesn’t dare bring it up to Edward—he’s pretty sure the two of them haven’t managed to actually speak today, which means the last discussion they’d had was the argument last night.

Mowing the lawn is a real pain in the dick. Sol spends all his time in the front yard navigating around Edward’s stupid rock garden, and all his time in the back yard with the mower spitting bits of gravel at the fence—god fucking forbid the gravel under the carport stay there.

(He’s gonna get Edward to buy him a new set of steel toes, and then he’s gonna fucking kick the carport to shreds, pour Edward a nice concrete pad, and build him a goddamn garage with an electric door on it and everything. Hell—if he can convince Tom to run the garden along the side fence instead of along the back, he can probably build a garage big enough for Tom’s truck too, and then both of them would be happy.)

By the time he’s finished with that, he’s too knackered to do anything nice for supper. The sun is low, the sky’s starting to darken, and Sol’s on his third set of clothes for the day, on account of he was covered in grass clippings from trying to unclog Edward’s stupid mower.

(He just _knows_ the push mower in the shed’s is Tom’s. He fucking _knows_ it.)

Still, though. He takes the time to scrub up some potatoes, wrap them in foil and toss them on the BBQ. Then he steals some of the dill that Tom hadn’t removed from the garden yet, makes a little tinfoil package full of carrots and chopped up dill and the fancy olive oil he’d bought with Edward’s money the other day. It’s still warm out when he heads to the back yard with the steaks and a couple of beer, which is good, because he’d ripped the sleeves off his white tshirt a couple of years ago, but the damn thing is just too comfy to get rid of even though it looks more than a little douchey.

(The grey sweats aren’t helping things any, but they’re fucking comfortable, and who does Sol have to impress, anyways?)

The steaks need a couple of minutes to come up to room temperature anyways, so Sol sits the plate next to the BBQ, opens the lid and pokes at the food with the tongs. Everything’s cooking up nice—it already smells fantastic, and it’ll be a right good meal. Get some calories into Edward, too, who distinctly slept past breakfast, and ducked into his office with the burrito Sol made him for lunch, claiming he _just had to check in on a couple of things_ , which probably means that he’ll work through, claim he didn’t, and forget to finish his lunch. It’s how he generally does it. Sol’s never minded that part—it means he can do his own thing without needing to worry about Edward’s schedule. He did mind the part where Edward picked up and moved out here without asking Sol...but he doesn’t think Edward would make that mistake again.

(He thinks, maybe, that Edward would do just about anything to keep Sol going back to the city, and maybe that suits Sol just fine.)

Sol leans against the house, opens his beer and takes a good long drink. He looks out past the fence to the railway tracks, and then the open prairie beyond. He’ll have to make sure the garage doesn’t cut off too much of the view. Maybe a double long garage, or something, one of those ones that opens from both ends—it’s not like Edward takes his vehicle out for much, and Sol can walk for groceries. The sunset is coming in all pinks and purples, rich oversaturated colours that are pretty as fuck, if you’re into that sort of thing...and Sol thinks that maybe he is.

The door creaks, and Sol glances over, raises his beer. “Speak of the devil,” he says dryly.

Edward raises his eyebrows. His face is still soft and loose from the sex earlier, and he’s wearing another one of Sol’s tshirts again, only paired with tight workout pants. “What are you doing out here?”

“Admiring the view,” Sol says. He raises his beer to his lips and takes a deep drink of it, watches the way Edward’s eyes fall to Sol’s throat. He swallows, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Cooking you supper.”

Edward smiles at him—a little crooked, with his teeth showing. He’s got a mark from Sol’s mouth on the side of his neck, just under his jaw. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s a better idea now that the bruise has darkened a bit, and it’s real visible. “Thanks, Sol.”

“Yeah,” Sol says. “Well. Nice way to end the weekend, isn’t it?”

Edward’s just opening his mouth to respond when they both hear the distinct sound of a truck out in front of the house. Edward glances over immediately. Sol doesn’t bother—he ain’t stupid, and Edward’s reaction gives it away anyway.

They stand there in silence, listening through the open kitchen windows as the front door opens, closes. Sol watches Edward, who stays alert for a minute or so, and then relaxes—and then Sol grins, because he can hear the bathroom window above them opening, and then the sound of the shower running.

“Go get that third steak out of the fridge, would you?” Sol asks. He turns back to the BBQ without waiting for Edward’s response, turns his potatoes over and moves the packet of carrots up to the warming rack so nothing burns. Waits for the door to creak again, and asks without looking up, “You still a monster?”

“If you mean _do I still like my meat cooked_ , then the answer is yes, Sol,” Edward says. He comes down the steps and around the corner, hands Sol a plate with the third steak on it, and then worms his way in under Sol’s arm, presses his lips to Sol’s bare shoulder.

“I’ll just put yours on straight from the fridge, then,” Sol says, reaching across Edward to grab the meat with his bare fingers and thunking the cold steak directly onto the grill. “If you’re gonna have me burn the bejeezus out of it anyways.”

“Don’t you dare—”

Sol sticks his fingers in his mouth, makes an obnoxious slurping sound as he sucks the blood from them. It tastes like cool copper, like a penny left in the fridge, and the way Edward squirms out and away with an absolutely disgusted look on his face is fucking hilarious.

“Wuss,” Sol calls after him, and Edward flips him the bird without turning back around, stalking past the carport to the little shed on the other side of the fence.

“You can still get salmonella from that, you know,” Tom says coolly.

Sol glances up, scoffs to cover the fact that Tom’s ability to move around the house without so much as a floorboard creaking or a hinge squeaking is uncanny at best. “My body fights off bacteria.”

“Like it fought off the broken front step?” Tom whacks his beer against the edge of the railing, catches the cap in his other hand and pockets it. “If that’s local, though, you’ll be fine.” He’s fresh from the shower, wearing a fresh pair of jeans, the wash on them well-faded, and the denim itself so worn it’d be soft to the touch. He’s got them paired with a burgundy hoodie, with the hood pulled up, and his wet hair threatening to fall into his eyes. Fresh shave, too, and his cheeks would be—

Sol clears his throat, turns back to his BBQ. “Yeah, it’s from town.” He wipes his hands on his sweats, and then picks up the tongs, pokes disconsolately at the steak he’s burning up for Edward. Such a waste. “How do you like your steak?” He waits a moment before setting down the tongs, reaching over the rail on the porch and poking Tom in the arm. “Your steak.”

Tom raises his eyebrows.

Sol takes a drink from his beer. “Are you a vegetarian?”

The bemused look on Tom’s face resolves into wry humour. “I’m not, no,” he says. He leans back against the railing, carefully not looking toward the shed where Edward is still...doing whatever he’s doing. “Just not used to having people make me food, that’s all.”

“Oh, you don’t _want_ Edward to make food for you,” Sol says lazily. “Terrible fucking cook, that man. Me, though, you _do_ want that.”

“Do I now,” Tom says, amused. “Well, rare is fine for me.”

“Fucking _knew_ it.”

“Oh?”

“Edward prefers his steak well-done.”

The little micro-expression that Tom makes would be easy to miss if Sol wasn’t paying attention—but he looks for it, and the little bit of derision that flashes across Tom’s face is fucking funny as hell.

Sol gestures vaguely at the shed with his beer. “What’s he doing back there, anyway?”

“...lawn chairs,” Tom answers, after a moment. “He’s got a pristine set back in there all wrapped in plastic.” He takes another drink, looks at Sol, the corner of his mouth twitching into half of a smile. “Guess you’re worth the fancy chairs.”

“Yeah, well, as long as I don’t have to sit on a decorative rock, I’m happy.” Sol pokes at Edward’s steak, watches as the last of the blood rises to the uncooked surface, and then sizzles away. God, Edward sure does love a ruined steak. “Ever think of putting a firepit in here?”

“Oh, we have a custom one,” Tom says.

“Right,” Sol says, imagining some bullshit thing that Edward carted out from the city with him. Natural gas hookup, and the fake little glass rocks for the flames to come out between.

“Drum of a washing machine welded onto a stand,” Tom says, “yeah.”

Sol stops in the midst of prodding at Edward’s steak with the tongs.

“I’ll pull that out too,” Tom says, leaving his beer on the rail, and walking over to the shed.

Okay, Sol thinks. Alright. And then he chuckles under his breath, because—fine, you know? If this is what it’s going to be like out here, if it’s going to be a constant push-pull between Edward and his fucking ties and his working lunches, and Tom and his cowboy boots and whatever monstrosity he’s about to bring out from the shed, that’s absolutely fine.

He flips Edward’s steak, trying not to think about either how tough it’s going to be cooked like this, or the horrible inevitability that he’s going to have to watch Edward _enjoy_ it. Glances over his shoulder, figuring maybe he’ll be able to see Edward struggling with something easy, or Tom pulling some kind of hick contraption out of the shed—but what he sees, instead, is the two of them standing close together, talking too quiet for Sol to hear.

He sees Tom reach for Edward, stop just short of touching him. Watches how Edward’s hand comes up, his fingertips brushing the lovebite Sol had left on his neck, before he ducks his head, mumbles something.

Sol can’t hear what Tom says, but when Edward looks up again, he’s smiling, and he reaches out, squeezes Tom’s arm before he disappears back into the shed. Tom very nearly touches the spot where Edward had touched him—his hand definitely heads there, before he catches himself—and when Tom glances back in Sol’s direction, Sol doesn’t look away.

He just grins, and winks.

Too bad Tom’s leaving tomorrow.

There’s possibilities there, is all.

🏚️

“Cows,” Tom says derisively, and Edward stifles a giggle with the back of his hand.

“Oh, come on,” Sol says. “I said the _worst_ part.” He slouches down in the fancy padded lawn chair he’s sitting in, kicks off his—well, Edward’s—fancy flip-flops and wiggles his bare feet at the heat coming from Tom’s homegrown firepit. “What’d a cow ever do to you?”

“Licked the inside of its own nose,” Tom says. He shudders, drains his beer, and bends down to line the empty bottle carefully up next to the one that’s already there.

“Tell the rest of the story,” Edward prompts, his eyes bright. He’s still balancing his empty plate on his lap—absolutely clean, because of course he’d eaten every scrap of the overcooked steak Sol had made him, and polished off his share of the potatoes and carrots besides.

Tom closes his eyes, rubs his thumb on the bridge of his nose. “And then licked my hand,” he says. “My boss thought it was hilarious.”

“It’s pretty fucking funny,” Sol agrees—absolutely worth it for the wounded look Tom shoots him. “Come on,” he adds, taking a calculated risk—because the sun’s gone, and the sky’s just getting darker. “You’ve had Edward lick your hand before.”

“I’m not a cow,” Edward objects, at the same time as Tom says, “Well, that wasn’t for work.”

Sol grins. “Leisure only,” he drawls.

Edward makes a grumpy noise, and Sol reaches out without looking, puts his hand on Edward’s knee and rubs it to calm him down. Raises his eyebrows at Tom. “They give you a fancy camera when they send you out into the field like that?”

“I have a camera,” Tom says carefully, “yes.” He wrinkles his nose, just slightly—an expression that Sol would bet is only happening because they’ve all had a couple beer, and some really good food, and are currently sitting in Edward’s comfy chairs enjoying the heat and the warmth coming from Tom’s firepit—which is sorely needed, because it’s cooling off fucking quick. “I’m not technically a photographer, but…”

“So if I took a look at your camera roll,” Sol says, all casual-like. “Took it back...oh, I don’t know. A year or so ago.”

“Sol,” Edward groans. “ _Don’t_.”

“Come on, baby,” Sol says, moving his hand up a bit higher on Edward’s leg. “I’m just askin’.”

“He’s not normally this rude,” Edward says, his words coming out in a rush even as a blush creeps up his face. “He got involved in some sort of—thing, when we were broken up—a-after I ditched him—”

“Oh yeah,” Sol says, grinning. “I said I’d tell you about the sex cult.”

“ _Sol_ , come on, Tom doesn’t want to know about any of that…”

“I think we can let Tom decide what he wants to hear,” Sol says. Very nearly continues the sentence with _he’ll safeword out if he wants_ , and manages to swallow that. He’s just not sure if Tom knows that Sol knows about the...uniform kink thing going bad.

(Sol would _desperately_ like the details on it, though.)

“A sex cult thing,” Tom says thoughtfully. He looks Sol up and down, his gaze calculating. “Huh.”

Now Sol’s the one that feels his face heat up. “You wouldn’t have nothin’ like that here.”

“You’d be surprised,” Tom says mysteriously.

There’s a vague rumble in the distance, and Tom turns his head toward the sound, tilts it slightly as he listens.

Sol takes advantage of the time to slide his hand a little further up Edward’s thigh, before taking it away—except the moment he releases the pressure, Edward’s hand shoots out, grabs Sol’s and _holds_ it there, against Edward’s thigh.

Sol looks at him, raises an eyebrow.

_Please_ , Edward mouths.

Sol squeezes the meat of Edward’s thigh, smirks when Edward sets his plate down on the grass, shifts his leg a little more toward Sol. When he looks across the fire again, Tom is watching them—intent, focused, curious.

“So?” Sol asks.

“What kind of a sex cult was it?” Tom asks, and Edward sighs, leans his forehead against Sol’s shoulder.

Sol slides his fingers along the inside of Edward’s thigh. “Oh, probably bog-standard. Nothing too imaginative—started out really focused on group sex, and then got a little weird toward the end there when the leader started talking about a whole bunch of _ascendancy_ and _higher purpose_ type shit.”

“You’re not a religious man, then,” Tom observes, reaching up to adjust his forelock.

“Don’t particularly have much of a preference myself,” Sol agrees. God, the heat between Edward’s legs is really something else. He guesses that Edward is going to be hard, or getting there, but he hasn’t moved his hand up quite far enough to tell. On purpose, of course.

“Why’d you leave?”

“It’s not an interview, Tommy,” Edward objects softly. “You can’t write an article on this.”

“Could if he wanted,” Sol says casually. “I don’t much care.”

Tom’s eyes light up, the flames of the fire flickering in the reflection of his eyes. God, he’s gorgeous. Edward had really done well for himself, right up until he’d fucked it up. Tom doesn’t look like the type to give second chances—and it’s very much like Edward to not appreciate his firsts.

(Sol, of course, believes in second chances. And thirds. And fourths, if they’re needed. God knows he’s needed enough of his own.)

“Not _now_ ,” Edward says, and Tom’s face softens, just slightly.

“Not now,” he agrees, before that little half-smile crosses over his face. “So, was the group sex a draw for you, Solomon?”

Sol laughs, swigs back the rest of his beer. “I mean, yeah—why not? Handsome man asks if you’ll breed a whole group of his gay entourage, who would I be to say no?”

Tom’s face darkens, somewhat, at the mention of the word _breed_ , but that inquisitive intensity is still there in his eyes. “What’s your favourite part of group sex?”

“Oh, god,” Edward says softly into Sol’s shoulder. He presses his lips there, and then stands up, stretches. “I’ll go get us more beer,” he says. His face is flushed in the firelight, his eyes dark.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Sol says. He watches Edward go, watches his flat ass in his tight pants. When he shifts his gaze across the fire to Tom, he realizes that Tom was watching, too.

Well, then.

“That was rude of me,” Tom says softly—an observation, not an apology.

“I don’t think so,” Sol says easily—and it doesn’t matter whether Tom means the staring, or the question, because Sol means both.

They sit in silence for a moment—well, near-silence, because there’s another rumble of thunder. Closer, this time. Tom doesn’t turn to look again, so Sol doesn’t either.

“I’ll answer the question if you want,” Sol says, keeping his voice casual, and his body loose. The fucking _adrenaline_ , though.

Tom pauses a moment, says, “Will Edward mind it, though?” in a voice just a touch louder than his regular speaking voice—and sure enough, when Sol glances back at the house, Edward is just coming out of the kitchen again, carrying three beer, with the edges of his hair suspiciously wet, as though he’d splashed his face with cold water while he was in there.

“Will I mind what?” Edward asks—and there it is, that sexy little waver in his voice, the one he gets when he’s super into it.

“If I answer Tom’s question,” Sol says, easily.

“ _Oh_ ,” Edward says, and his face immediately goes red again. He swallows. “I, uh. I don’t mind. If Sol wants to answer. We can—it’s fine. Whatever is fine.” He holds a beer out to Sol, and Sol grins at him.

“Serve Tom first,” Sol says easily. “Let me think a minute.”

He watches how Edward does it—holds the beer bottle out to Tom for a moment before wincing, and fumbling in his pocket for a bottle opener, popping the cap off and then offering the beer again. Tom’s fingers touch his when Tom takes it—though whether that’s due to the awkward way Edward is holding the bottle, or something Tom intended, who’s to say?

(Maybe it’s both.)

Sol takes the open beer that Edward offers him, and has a drink, considering. Shifts his feet apart when Edward ignores his chair, plunks himself down on the grass between Sol’s feet. Sol puts his hand in Edward’s hair, watches the way Tom’s eyes flicker down to catalogue the movement before coming back up to Sol’s face. Well—flicking to the horizon, when there’s another ominous rumble, but Tom’s attention comes back to him pretty quickly after that, and that’s just where Sol wants it.

The truth is—there’s a couple things about the group sex that Sol wasn’t into. He didn’t like the impersonalness that was dictated to him, didn’t like being directed as to what he was supposed to be doing, didn’t like that he couldn’t touch certain people, that it was meant to be a clinical thing, didn’t like being told that he wasn’t _getting it_ , that it wasn’t _right_ —because it’s sex, it ain’t supposed to be clinical, it’s supposed to be about _feelings_.

But when it was good?

Hoo, boy, it was good.

“The best part was the intimacy,” he says, finally, pulling his mind away from the things that were terrible, and back to the things that actually drew him there in the first place. “The connection, the energy—that feeling of being able to reach out and always having somebody there. The bit where it wasn’t about synchronizing orgasms between two people, so you can both come at the same time, or close to it, and then you’re done, it was about—just, like, this ongoing sexual energy, resonating in the entire room, and this endless wave of—orgasm, and build-up, and edging, and everyone at different points of the experience, but it didn’t matter, because it was kind of…”

“A holistic thing,” Tom offers, tugging his chair a little bit closer to the fire—and, subsequently, closer to Sol and Edward. “Something that transcends the mechanics of sex.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Sol says, “that’s it exactly.” He tips his head to the side, smirks. “You have experience, then?”

“Oh, nothing so elaborate as you’re describing,” Tom says. God, that little hint of detachment about him is as compelling as fuck. “And nothing personally. I have...friends in some non-traditional relationship structures.”

“ _Here_?” Sol asks.

Tom manages to look a little offended at that. “Like I said—”

“Don’t be a snob about the town,” Edward says, nuzzling against Sol’s knee. “He was a shithead about me moving out here too,” he adds.

“There’s nothing wrong with Red Lily,” Tom says defensively, and Sol very nearly opens his mouth to explain everything that’s wrong with it, starting with the sidewalks, and going forward from there—but then he just brings his fresh beer up to his mouth and has a swig, swallows it back, lets the rumble of thunder in the distance drown out the words he would have said.

“Just not used to it,” he mutters when the sky quiets down. “Always lived in cities.”

It’s the right answer, because both Tom and Edward relax.

“You never told me you were into group sex,” Edward says, after a moment. His hand is curled around Sol’s bare ankle, thumb caressing the bone. The warmth is nice—the temperature has dropped, now that the sun is down, and there are goosebumps running up and down Sol’s skin, but the flickering light from the fire should disguise most of them, because he’s sure as fuck not going to get a jacket. Not now. Timing’s all wrong. This is the fragile part of it, the part where anything can set the vibe off.

Sol shrugs—casual, easy, making sure that they both get a good look at his bare arms if they want. “Didn’t know I was till after. You never brought it up, either.”

“ _Are_ you into group sex, Edward?” Tom asks from across the fire. He’s watching Edward intently, his fingers tapping gently on his thigh.

“I don’t know,” Edward says, flustered. “Never had it, have I?” He fidgets with his nearly-full beer, and then glances across the fire again. “Tom, have I...what did I do?”

Sol looks over, too. Tom doesn’t look upset—just pensive, staring into the fire and shifting his fingers on the neck of his beer bottle, moving it back and forth like a pendulum.

“Nothing,” Tom says, bringing his eyes over to Edward slowly. They’re dark, and serious, but that little quirk is present at the corner of his mouth, like he’s fighting back a smile or a smirk. “No, it’s—I’m just trying to decide whether or not I’m irritated that this has come up _now_ , when I’m leaving for work in...nine hours.”

“It’s bad timing,” Edward agrees immediately, with his typical cooked spaghetti of a spine. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“Or,” Sol says, because he’s never been one to let a good mistake go unmade, “you _should_ have pushed it, because it’ll be—what? How long are you gone, usually, Tom? Plenty of time to cool off if it turns out we shouldn’t have, isn’t it?”

Tom looks over at Sol, then, and his eyes are dark and wide, and that little quirk of a smile is _very_ present just at the corner of his mouth. “Well,” he says.

Sol smirks, opens his legs wider, pats his thigh. Sure, Edward’s still sitting between his legs—but there’s room for Tom here, too, there’s room for Tom to sit on Sol’s lap and let Edward nuzzle his cock. It’ll be just like old times for the two of them, except Sol’s going to be here to make sure that Edward doesn’t say anything fucking stupid. Sol’s going to be here to make sure that Edward has someone to cling to, he’s going to be here to make sure that Tom can pull back, get a clean break to focus on his job when he needs it. Sol’s going to be here when Edward needs someone to remind him how to be a person again, when he’s woozy with the intimacy of connection, and needs grounding.

Across the fire, Tom stands. Sets down his beer, pushes his hood back. He looks unworldly in the firelight—ethereal and ice-cold, like a faerie king, like—like fucking Bowie in that movie with the maze. “What do you think, Ned,” he says softly. “Do you want to try?”

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Edward says, on a shuddering exhale. He pushes his hand back through his hair, tugs on the strands at the end, and sways against Sol, who slides his hand down the neck of Edward’s shirt, splays it over Edward’s upper back. “I, uh. Yeah, I—I do, I would, I—Sol?”

“Say it,” Sol says, voice low and rough.

Edward exhales, a breathless chuckle on his lips. He pushes himself to his feet, bracing himself on Sol’s knee. “Trust you to be a dick about it.”

“He’s right,” Tom says. “Use your words, Ned.”

“The fuck have I gotten myself into,” Edward mutters. He looks up at the dark sky, runs his hand through his hair again. When he looks back at Sol, he’s got a goofy grin on his face that he’s trying unsuccessfully to suppress. “Yeah. Fuck it, let’s have a threesome, what the hell.”

“Let’s have a threesome,” Tom says, smiling.

“Fuck yeah,” Sol says. This is the most sensitive time of it—where they know what they’re going to do, but they haven’t started yet, where he needs to shepherd both of them through it, soothe Edward’s anxieties and—whatever Tom has going on. That responsibility lands on Sol, and nothing is going to stop him. He stands up from his cushioned lawn chair, stretches, watches the way that both men watch him.

Sol takes a step forward—and that’s when the sky opens, drenching them.

🏚️

It’s a complete fucking shitshow. The rain is coming down hard and fast, and Edward’s fancy fucking lawn chairs all have cushions on them, so they need to get back into the shed before they’re soaked through. Tom springs into action quickly, goes for the plates and the cutlery and the beer bottles, while Sol starts hauling the chairs back to the shed. It only takes him a couple minutes to get two of them back there, folded up and stashed away, but by the time he comes out of the shed again, he’s soaked through. So’s Edward—the idiot is still outside, bringing the last chair over.

“Go inside,” Sol yells.

Edward looks at him, helpless, for a moment before he sets his jaw, stubborn. “Wanted to get the last chair.”

Sol looks down at the chair that Edward is holding, which is soaking wet, cushion and all, and then up at Edward. “Look, babe…”

The seriousness of the moment is completely destroyed when Edward yelps, and winces, his hand going up to his head. “The _fuck_?”

Sol laughs, even when he feels something sharp hit him too. He glances down at his feet and sees it—a little irregular piece of ice, about the size of a pea. Hail. Of course. He looks over to the fire, which is completely out now, and then takes the chair from Edward, tosses it into the shed, and closes the shed door with his bare foot. “Race you inside.”

Edward pushes his hair back out of his eyes. “Wait, wha—”

Sol takes off. Not fast—he doesn’t trust his ankle yet, and he’s barefoot in wet grass on top of everything else, so it’s pretty easy for Edward to catch up with him—but fuck, it’s heady, having Edward chase him, with Edward’s cold fingers grasping at the hem of his shirt, hail bouncing off his bare arms, and that one moment at the end where he’s not entirely sure if he’s going to be able to jump onto the back porch and gracefully get into the house, or whether he’s going to slip on the grass and just full-body crash into it.

(He’ll fucking build Edward and Tom a whole new back porch too, actually integrate the BBQ with the rest of it instead of just leaving it sitting on a slab of concrete beside like a lonely little afterthought.)

Sol stumbles into the kitchen, skidding on the tiles, with Edward laughing and clinging to his shirt. Tom is standing there, carefully drying his hair with a bathroom towel. He looks at the two of them, and then says, “Well, that was needlessly dangerous.”

“Sorry, Tom,” Edward says breathlessly. “Aw, shit, I’m dripping on the floor, too.”

Floor’s a write-off, as far as Sol can see—the three of them are all absolutely soaked, but it’s just tile, and Sol’s gonna replace it anyways, so even the cracks in the grout don’t matter—but Tom just sighs, takes a step back, and says fondly, “Come here, then, I’ll dry your hair.”

Sol’s not sure what’s hotter—the water dripping off Tom’s hair, the way he’s holding himself back from reaching for Edward, or the fact that Edward actually wavers before he moves.

“Fucking _go_ , idiot,” Sol says, leaning over and swiping one of the other towels from the table, and then giving Edward a gentle push. “I’m right here.”

“Okay,” Edward says. He sounds a little nervous, so Sol shuts his eyes so Edward can have a bit of privacy.

(Sol knows how it feels. First couple of times you hook up with somebody when there’s other people watching, it’s fucking weird. Heady, and hot as hell, but fucking weird too. It’s probably even weirder when it’s your ex and your current—well, your ex, and your ex from before that, who’s now your current...whatever.)

The towel smells like laundry detergent, like fabric softener, like that scent that clings to Tom’s clothes and to his hair. Sol inhales deep, and then sets the towel down, peels his soaking wet shirt over his head, and drops it into the sink.

When he opens his eyes again, Edward and Tom are kissing.

It doesn’t look like it was planned—Tom is still holding a towel against the back of Edward’s head, and Edward’s hair is still wet, and there’s a _tap-tap-tap_ from water dripping off Edward’s elbow onto the floor because he isn’t standing on the towel like he should be—but his lips are pressed against Tom’s, and his eyes are closed, with his dark lashes fanned out on his cheeks, and he looks fucking _exquisite_ right now.

Tom would look gorgeous as hell too if he didn’t currently have his eyes open.

Sol gestures at him. _The fuck you doing?_

Tom raises his eyebrow.

_Yes, it’s okay_ , Sol mouths. He waves at his own face. _Close your fucking eyes!_

Tom winks at him, but does as he’s asked, and closes his eyes like a normal fucking person, which means Sol can watch the two of them kiss while he leans against the counter. God, it’s good—not the sloppy, teeth-and-tongue mess that he’s used to with Edward, but slow, cautious, controlled. Tom is setting the pace, and Edward is following, his ears burning bright red and his neck starting to go pink up into his cheeks. He’s even keeping his hands to himself, and it’s good to know that Edward can show that kind of restraint, when he’s properly motivated for it.

Sol picks up the towel again, carefully dries off the bottom of his feet, and then takes a couple steps forward until he’s standing right behind Edward. He leans in close, breathes hot on the back of Edward’s neck to make sure Edward knows he’s here, and isn’t going to bolt or startle or anything.

Edward makes a little high-pitched noise in the back of his throat, shaped like a question.

“It’s all good,” Sol says, nice and low and soft. “Look how fucking hot the two of you are. He looks like he’s a good kisser, baby. Yeah? He a good kisser?”

“So good,” Edward says between kisses, and Sol’s in there close enough that he can see the way Tom’s mouth quirks when Edward says it.

“This how the two of you usually kiss?” Sol keeps his voice nice and low as he reaches down to Edward’s waistband, plucks the hem of his shirt away from his waist and slides his hand up Edward’s bare back, up skin that should be clammy and cold from the rain, but is, instead, burning hot. “Not touching at all except for your lips?” He makes a _tsk_ sound low in his throat, starts working the wet fabric of Edward’s shirt up his back.

This time it’s Tom that pulls away, and his eyes are wide and dark. “What are the parameters?”

“Arms up,” Sol says quietly, and he eases Edward’s wet shirt over his head, tosses it into the sink with a wet _splat_. He watches how Tom’s eyes waver, just slightly, flicking down to Edward’s pierced nipples before coming back up to Sol.

“I...don’t want to upset anything,” Tom says, and it’s sweet of him to say so, but it’s really not fucking necessary—Sol’s not fragile, he can watch anything that the two of them can do, he can—

“You won’t,” Edward says, his voice rough and intense and oddly earnest. “Sol and I are good. Nothing that happens here is gonna shake that.” He reaches out for Tom, rests his fingers tentatively on Tom’s side, like he wants to slide them up under Tom’s wet shirt but isn’t sure if he should.

“You…” Tom says, and then his voice trails off. He stands there for a moment, and Sol thinks that maybe they’ve upset _him_ , that maybe there’s something Sol missed, some variable Sol didn’t account for—and then Tom clears his throat, takes a step forward. “I wasn’t asking you, Ned,” he says, firm and quiet. “Come, now.”

Edward’s breath catches. Then Tom brings his hand up, covers Edward’s mouth.

Sol’s fucking impressed. Hell, even _he_ hesitates a second when Tom lifts his eyes, stares directly into Sol’s soul like he’s weighing and measuring and taking stock of what he sees there.

“What are the parameters, Sol?” Tom asks, and Edward moans into Tom’s hand, shifting his feet on the floor.

Sol grins, reaches out for Edward’s waist and holds him there, steady, lets Edward feel the heft of Sol’s cock just starting to press up against his ass. “Hmmm,” he says, like he’s thinking about it, when really all he’s doing is just shifting his hips against the small of Edward’s back, enjoying the drag of his rain-soaked sweats against Edward’s.

Then Edward tilts his hips back to rub against Sol, and Sol takes a half-step back, even though he’d really rather not.

Edward makes a disappointed noise into Tom’s palm, and Sol laughs.

“Come on, baby, he already covered your mouth—don’t think that was an invitation for you to rub up on my cock, now, was it?”

“No,” Edward mutters.

“Alright, then, be good,” Sol says. He drags his eyes again from Edward’s lower back, and his flat little ass, and forces himself to look at Tom again—which isn’t really a trial, not when Tom is all wet hair and dark eyes and that steady, calculating gaze. “I don’t think there’s much for parameters at all, really. Figure maybe the two of us can wreck Edward, and then when he’s lying on the bed being useless—don’t argue, Edward, you know how you get after you get dicked—I’ll wreck you, and then the two of you can lie there and be pretty for me while I get myself off, yeah?”

Tom takes a deep breath, tilts his head. The pseudo-innocent look on his face is absolutely ruined by his blown-black eyes and the flush starting to come up from his neck onto his cheeks, but it’s a fetching look all the same, especially when he’s still wearing his wet clothes.

(Sol has no idea what the fuck Tom is wearing under his hoodie, but the hoodie is wet enough that Sol can see the suggestion of his nipples and _fuck_ , if Tom’s into getting his chest groped like Edward is, Sol’s gonna be fucking _delighted_.)

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Tom says, “if that’s your idea of consent negotiation.” He raises an eyebrow. “Or your idea of fuck choreography—that cult leader of yours make you wait to come till the end every time?”

He had, if Sol got to come at all, but that’s beside the point. “Pick something to unpack, then,” Sol challenges. “I don’t give a fuck.” What he wants, really, is to rub his dick back against Edward again, but Tom’s making do with no contact except for his hand over Edward’s mouth, so Sol is gonna bloody well make do with his hands on Edward’s waist, even though he normally uses this exact same grip as a handle, to get Edward yanked back exactly where he wants him.

Tom shuts his eyes, takes a long, steady breath. Opens his eyes, ignoring Edward completely in order to just focus on Sol, and, god, yeah, Sol would let him move in pretty much immediately too if this is how he looks before the fucking’s even started yet. “Before we go to the bedroom—I want to know how Edward gets when he gets dicked.”

Sol opens his mouth to say something smart, like _obviously you know_ or _don’t be ridiculous_ , but it’s Edward that speaks first.

“Well, _fuck_ ,” he says softly.

And then Sol gets it. He lets go of Edward’s hips and takes a step back, steadying himself on the counter. “Fucking hell,” he says in a low voice. “Are you seriously telling me that Edward Little _tops_?”

“Look,” Edward says, actually turning his head enough so that he can look at Sol—but not, interestingly, enough for Tom’s hand to be dislodged from his mouth. “You told me the other night that you bottom now—”

“I said I bottom _sometimes_ ,” Sol corrects. He makes a deliberate point of looking Edward up and down, and then reaching for his own cock and running his fingers along the shadow of his dick, outlined by his wet sweatpants. Slow and casual, nothing serious—just enough to get Edward’s attention, with a nice little bonus if Tom looks too. Which he does. “Never said I’d bottom for you.”

Edward turns back to Tom, and Tom smiles at him, takes his hand off Edward’s mouth, and drags it down Edward’s face, his neck, onto his chest. Sol can’t see what he’s doing with it from where he’s standing—but he doesn’t need to, because Edward does that little shudder he does when somebody plays with one of his piercings.

“Turn,” Tom says softly. “Talk.”

Edward swivels to face Sol, lifting his chin like that gives him some sort of dominance in the conversation. Please—he’s still shorter than Sol, even with his sandals on.

(Behind him, Tom starts pulling his wet hoodie over his head.)

“I never asked,” Edward says defensively.

“But did you want to?” Sol needles, crossing his arms over his chest because he knows Edward likes the way it makes his pecs look. “Did you think about lying me back on the bed, buckass naked?”

“I—maybe,” Edward says, flustered. “I—look, I thought about it!”

“Yeah?” Sol asks. He widens his stance, watches the way Edward’s eyes go from his chest to his stomach to his cock. “Think about working your fingers up my ass the same way you do to yourself?”

“This is all very enlightening,” Tom observes quietly from behind Edward. He has his hoodie off now. Underneath, he’s wearing a tshirt that’s a little tight on his arms and across his chest, which nevertheless looks oddly—

“I _knew_ I didn’t lose that shirt,” Edward blurts, and Tom actually goes a little bit pink.

(Sol thinks for a moment that he’ll protest—but Tom just keeps his lips tight and doesn’t say anything, and fuck if that isn’t fucking hot too.)

“So if I’ve got the right of it,” Tom says, forging forward even though he’s standing there in Edward’s stolen shirt, his cheeks pink and his jaw set. “Sol tops exclusively—”

“With exceptions,” Sol drawls.

“—with exceptions,” Tom agrees. “And Edward bottomed for Sol, but topped for me.” He grins, a little half-crooked thing that shows a slightly pointed incisor on one side. Sol shouldn’t find it attractive, but that ship has sailed. “I feel like we can go upstairs, get warmed up, and maybe exercise some of that variety, gentlemen.”

“Sol can top you, if you want,” Edward offers, in a haphazard rush. “He’s real good at it, probably better than I am.”

God, _fuck_ keeping distance between them, not when Edward’s going to just throw himself on the metaphorical sword like that, especially not when Tom is still eyefucking him that intensely. Sol takes a step forward, wraps his arm around Edward’s chest, careful to rub his forearm against the piercings, and tugs Edward against him. “Look at you,” he growls in Edward’s ear. “Just gonna admit that you were giving Tom mediocre dick all that time?”

“Well,” Tom says—soft, quiet, considering.

“I was doing my best,” Edward gasps, trying to writhe up against Sol’s arm and back against his cock at the same time, and succeeding at neither.

“We’re gonna need a little more than your best tonight,” Sol continues, using his other hand to start working Edward’s pants off—which, judging by the way the waistband catches on Edward’s cock, he must sorely need, but he’s been good, at least, and hasn’t been griping—or, more likely, he’s been getting off on the constriction, which is fine too. “If you’re gonna pull yourself together for anything resembling round two…”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Tom says easily. He reaches out and pats Edward’s cheek, softens it by leaning forward and kissing him, sliding his hand around Edward’s body to rest, cautiously but deliberately, on Sol’s hip. Then he looks up at Sol, and smiles with all his teeth showing. “I switch. If Edward’s one and done—that’s fine by me, we can make it work.”

Sol’s cock throbs, and he closes his eyes for a second, inhales, exhales. “Lead the way,” he says, and his voice is steady and calm even though his heart rate is definitely not.

He watches as Tom pulls Edward’s tshirt over his head, tugging a bit harder than he would need to if it wasn’t a half-size too small for him. unbuttons his wet jeans, shoves them down his legs, and then hangs them over the back of one of the chairs. He’s wearing loose cotton boxers with a small rainbow neatly hand-embroidered just below the waistband, which are currently stretched tight around what looks like a lovely cock—and that’s confirmed a moment later, when Tom unceremoniously takes those off as well, displaying a nicely proportioned cock, with the foreskin about half pulled back, and a lot more jet black pubic hair, neatly trimmed and tidy, than what Sol would have guessed. Tom hesitates a moment before smiling wryly and tossing the underwear in the sink with the rest of the wet clothing, turning and leaving the kitchen stark naked.

“Take your time,” he calls out. “I’m having a quick shower.”

(Christ, the build on him—Sol watches him walk across the living room on his way upstairs, and it’s not clear what exactly he does to work out—he’s a reporter at a small-town paper, for crying out loud—but he clearly does it consistently.)

Sol waits until Tom has just disappeared up the stairs before he starts marching Edward in that direction too, making enough noise with his feet that he hopes his voice won’t carry.

“You realize,” he says, low and right next to Edward’s ear, “that you _absolutely_ fucked that relationship up.”

Instead of getting Edward whining about it, which is what he expects, Edward just—stops moving, and looks at Sol. “Aren’t you...happy about it?”

The shower starts running upstairs, and Sol sighs, shakes his head. “God, why the fuck would I be _happy_ about it? I’d have dragged my ass out here when I needed you to bail me out regardless, and I’d have still gone for this threesome if it’d been on the table in that situation too.” He tucks Edward’s arm neatly behind his back, starts gently moving him toward the stairs again. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continues softly, nuzzling Edward’s hair as they go, “this is beneficial as all hell for me. I love being back in your life again, and you’d better believe I’m gonna sleep in your bed and cook your food and dick you down whenever you want it if you’ll have me. I’m just saying that whatever happened between the two of you—he’ll probably take you back too, if you—”

“Nah,” Edward says, shaking his head. “He won’t take me back. Not as...I mean, I don’t think...” He glances upstairs, hesitates before stepping onto the first stair. “I shouldn’t have ditched you in the city,” he says, finally. “I...got all avoidant with you, and it made me all clingy with him, and I’ve been doing, uh, therapy over the phone, and…I’m still a mess…”

“Christ,” Sol says, and he lets go of Edward’s arm, turns him around and hauls him into a hug, burying his face in Edward’s hair. “I fucking know all that, Edward. I’m not stupid, I fucking know all that shit, and Tom isn’t stupid either, and I gather he knows too.” He pulls back a bit, wipes his thumb across Edward’s wet cheeks, and then wipes the back of his hand under Edward’s nose for good measure, because Sol’s still wearing his sweats and he can wipe his hand off after.

There’s a rumble of thunder from outside, loud enough that it rattles the windows, and Sol winces. The hail’s let up, at least, but if the thunder is going to rattle the house, that’s not great.

“We’ve got time,” Sol says. “If you’re still up for the fucking, we’ll go and fuck. You and I will talk all this shit out when Tom’s gone for work, and we can talk it out again with him when he gets back, yeah? No biggie, buddy.” He kisses Edward’s temple, hugs him again. “Yeah?”

Edward sniffs, nods. “Yeah,” he says, and then he smiles up at Sol through wet eyelashes.

Sol’s heart clenches. Fucking hell, he’ll just say it, he’s just gonna tell him, he’ll just—

“I love you, Sol,” Edward says, and Sol whacks him on the arm before he’s even got the words out.

“Bastard,” Sol says, laughing. “I was gonna say that.”

“Said it first,” Edward says, grinning crookedly, and then before Sol can do anything else, Edward is heading up the stairs, cradling his junk in one hand to keep it from bouncing around.

“Christ,” Sol says, to no one in particular. He laughs again, strips off his sweats and his underwear, and goes upstairs to join them.

🏚️

Sol maintains that the most important thing about group sex is setting a scene. Making sure everybody is displayed to their best effect. Conveying an appropriate atmosphere. If Sol had his druthers, he’d have Edward naked on the bed, fingering himself, desperate for it. Sol would be leaning against the wall, relaxed but still hard, telling Edward what to do, making it clear that he’s ready to go, but he’s willing to wait for Tom, let Tom have first pick.

Unfortunate, then, that Sol and Edward are still in the hallway, and nowhere close to arriving at the bedroom. Sol’s got Edward pinned back against the wall, and his tongue in Edward’s mouth, and Edward is shifting and panting and trying to rut his cock against Sol’s thigh, which Sol keeps moving on purpose just so that Edward can’t get a good purchase on it.

“Fuck you,” Edward gasps, turning his head to the side and panting. “Come on, come on, _Sol_.”

Sol takes the opportunity to kiss Edward’s neck, just as aggressively as Edward likes it—all suction and teeth. Edward’s cock is smearing pre on Sol’s thigh. It’s hot as hell.

“Horny bitch,” Sol says, his voice low and Edward’s skin wet underneath his lips. “Bet you I could make you do anything for Tom, yeah?”

“Yes, yes—shit, shit, slow down, Sol, _Sol_ ,” Edward hisses.

Sol grins at him, lets go of his wrists and reaches down, grips Edward’s cock, nice and firm, tapping his fingers against Edward’s balls. “Gonna come before we even get started?”

Edward thunks the back of his head on the wall, shuts his eyes and scrunches his entire face up. “I—Sol, I—”

“Bet you have one of those things, for when things get too much,” Sol says, tapping his fingers a little harder, and rotating his hand just slightly—not enough to hurt, just enough to make Edward focus on something that isn’t coming all over Sol’s hand before they’ve even properly gotten to the threesome. “You know, the words.”

(God, he loves acting like an idiot on purpose, like they hadn't already had this discussion. The fucking _mess_ it makes of Edward.)

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Edward gasps. “Sol, please, I need—”

“It’s equus,” Tom says from behind them, and both Edward and Sol startle, which means Sol inadvertently tightens his grip on Edward. Edward makes a high-pitched squeaking sound which Sol, personally, would rather die of embarrassment than make, but Edward’s just blushing furiously, so he’s probably fine with it.

“Y-yeah,” Edward says, trying to recover some of his dignity. “That’s the safeword. Equus.”

“Thanks,” Sol says. He switches his grip on Edward’s cock to something more gentle, rubs his knuckles against the inside of Edward’s thighs too. Uses his shoulder to press Edward against the wall, and then turns to look at Tom. And look he does. “God, look at you.”

“Thank you,” Tom says, pleased. He reaches up and tucks his forelock back behind his ear again. He’s got a nice chest, trim waist, good legs. Cock’s back to hanging soft between his legs, but Sol has no doubt whatsoever they’ll be able to fix that, especially with the way Tom is eyeing both of them. “The main bedroom?”

“Of course,” Edward says, “yeah, I wouldn’t—yeah.” He takes a step away from the wall, runs his hands through his hair. “I’ll get the blanket off the bed.”

“We don’t fuck in my bedroom,” Tom says conspiratorially as the two of them watch Edward go.

“Wouldn’t expect so,” Sol says, “not with your bedroom looking like a goddamn magazine cover.”

“That’s kind of you,” Tom says, voice dropping, and his hand coming up to rest on Sol’s bicep.

Sol hazards a sidelong glance at him—and Tom looks even more pleased about the compliment on his bedroom than the one about his body. Probably not Tom that did the shoddy tilework, then. “You wanna fuck him?” Sol offers.

“Hmm, we’ll see,” Tom says, squeezing Sol’s arm gently, and then walking toward the bedroom. “Not sure if Edward deserves the focus, now, do you, Ned?”

Sol follows after Tom, steps into the bedroom just in time to see Edward blushing all the way down to his chest.

“I’m good for it. I’ll be good for you.”

Sol snorts. “Nah, you’ve never been good for me.” He approaches Edward, circles around behind him.

“Isn’t that something, Ned,” Tom says, approaching Edward from the front. He puts his hands on Edward’s chest and starts playing with his nipple piercings. “Bad behaviour for Sol, good behaviour for me—what are you even going to do with yourself tonight?”

Sol steps in close, puts his hands on Edward’s ass, kneads the skin there. Christ, he’s got a bony ass. Still feels fucking great, though. Not much to grind his cock into, but he does it anyways because it’s familiar, and it feels good.

“Fuck,” Edward says, going up onto his tiptoes a moment before Sol grabs his hips, guides him back down. “Fuck, I—oh, _god_ , the two of you—this is so much, I’m—is it always like this?”

“Don’t know,” Tom says breathlessly. He’s standing close enough to Edward that if Sol just reaches around—and, yeah, Tom is hard now, vaguely rubbing his cock against Edward’s leg, though he turns his hips slightly the moment Sol’s hand is there, starts rubbing up on Sol’s palm instead. “Oh, you’ve got callused hands—no, that’s a compliment, I’m just—not used to it on other people’s hands.”

“Course you aren’t,” Sol says, rutting up against Edward’s ass again while he strokes Tom’s cock. “Edward’s never worked a real job a day in his life, have you, Edward? Nepotism all the way, got you that cushy job you have now, sitting in an office while Tom and I run around doing all the real work—”

“Sol,” Edward sighs. He leans forward, nuzzles into Tom’s neck, makes a pleased little noise.

“—and then the end of the day comes, and...what...you let Tom suck your cock?”

“I do like sucking cock,” Tom murmurs, and, fuck—Sol bets he looks fucking gorgeous doing it, too. With those eyes, fuck. Bet he’s good at it. Wouldn’t gag or anything, though, and if Sol asked? If Sol asked, Tom would kneel down and do it.

Not yet, though.

“How often you suck his?” Sol asks, giving Tom’s cock a slow, firm stroke, and then pressing it back against Edward’s hip. “Probably not often enough, huh, Edward? How much time you spend thinking of Tom, and what he needs? You even remember how to suck cock, because based on—”

“Fucking hell, Sol,” Edward says breathlessly, and then he drops to his knees in front of Tom, peers up at him. “Can I, Tom? I’m good at it—better now, I’m—”

Tom tilts his head, considers. “Oh, I don’t know, puppy. If Sol doesn’t think you’re any good…and it has been quite a while for you and I...maybe I’d rather have Sol suck me off.”

Sol grins, crouches down and nudges Edward’s shoulder with his knee. “Move over, Nedward. Let me show you how it’s done, yeah?”

“Jesus fuck,” Edward says, but he shifts over and makes space. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is going that fucking hot half-open thing, which means he was about two seconds away from really begging to suck Tom off—and watching Sol do it better is just gonna make him more desperate.

Sol shifts gracefully onto his knees, making sure to press his bare thigh against Edward’s. He puts one hand on Tom’s thigh, and the other over Edward’s. “Watch and learn, pup,” Sol says.

Edward shudders, reaches between his legs for his cock.

Tom tsks, slides his hand into Edward’s hair. “You’ll watch,” he says, gentle but firm. “If you’re gonna touch anybody’s cock, it should be Sol’s. Show me how he likes to get jerked off, huh?”

Sol nuzzles Tom’s pubic hair. He smells like soap, not a hint of sweat on him. Then he slowly drags the tip of his tongue up the length of Tom’s cock, flicking the end of it, and—there. There he is, there’s the taste of Tom that he was looking for. Sol hovers there for a minute, just—inhaling, breathing him in, and then he nudges the head of Tom’s cock against his lips, gives it a kiss. Starts drawing it into his mouth, going nice and slow.

“Firm strokes,” Edward is saying. His hand is hot on Sol’s cock, his palm sweaty. “Slow for right now, because we’re just getting started and I’m not trying to make him come yet.”

Sol hums his assent around Tom’s cock, curls his hand around Tom’s hip to pull him in a bit closer. It’s a fucking nice cock, but Tom’s being entirely too polite about the whole thing—Sol can feel how tight the muscles in his thighs are. He pulls back, deliberately lets a string of saliva stretch between his lips and Tom’s dick while he glances up. “You can fuck my face,” he says, voice rough. “Maybe _he_ puked on you once, but I won’t.”

“I _didn’t_ ,” Edward says, appalled.

“Of course you didn’t,” Tom soothes, petting soothing strokes in Edward’s hair. “You’ll tap out if you need it, Sol?”

“Yeah,” Sol says. He licks his lips, goes back in—and this time, the tension in Tom’s thighs relaxes, and he starts grinding into Sol’s mouth, and—god, yeah, this is better. Learning the rhythm of Tom’s hips, the way he likes to linger in the deepest part of Sol’s mouth, rubbing the head of his cock against the back of Sol’s throat. It’s a slow, languid thing, with Tom’s hand on Sol’s jaw—not forcing him back and forth, just guiding him, supporting him, keeping him steady, drawing his cock out of Sol’s mouth and turning Sol’s head to the side— _oh_ , and that’s Edward, that’s Edward’s lips, and Edward’s sloppy method of kissing, and then that’s Tom’s cock between them again, and now they’re kissing each other and Tom’s cock both, sliding their mouths up and down the shaft. Edward’s eyes are closed, and his face is pink. He’s not touching Sol’s cock much—mostly just giving it small little irregular strokes, and that’s so goddamn typical that Sol would laugh if his mouth wasn’t occupied.

“That’s good,” Tom says, his voice a touch unsteady. “I’ve never—that’s so good.”

Sol shuffles a bit closer, reaches for Edward’s cock, and finds Edward’s hand already there, wrapped tight around the base. Sol taps Edward’s fingers, waits for Edward to open his eyes, and then raises his eyebrows. “You close?” he murmurs against the hard shaft of Tom’s cock.

“God, shut _up_ , Sol,” Edward whines. His eyes are only half-open, and they’re blown black. “I used to—I’ve...thought about this.”

“Called me Sol once,” Tom says, rubbing his cock against Sol’s mouth. “First time I deepthroated him.”

“Oh god,” Edward says. “I hoped you’d forgotten that.”

Sol pulls back from Tom’s cock, sits back on his heels. Uses his hand to guide Tom’s cock into Edward’s mouth, keep him quiet. “And?”

“Oh, I didn’t mind,” Tom says, watching his cock disappear into Edward’s mouth. His face is pink, and his hand has tightened in Edward’s hair. “He got all blushy about it, though.”

“I’m sure he did,” Sol says. He gives into temptation, pinches Edward’s nipple, and then rubs his finger over it, feeling the bar shift under the skin. “Always does when he figures he’s let something slip he shouldn’t have. But you could have told Tom about me, baby. Could have told him who taught you to suck cock so nice. Could have told him how good you were at taking my dick—did you ever tell him that, sweetheart?”

Edward is blushing bright red now. He shakes his head, keeps sucking Tom’s cock, and pressing his chest into Sol’s hand, which is fine by Sol—he’d love to lie Edward out on the bed, sit on him and just grope his chest until he comes all over himself. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. But now?

Now, Edward’s got his lips wrapped around a very handsome man’s cock, and Tom is right there, breathing hard, the muscles in his stomach tense. Sol reaches between Tom’s legs, touches his sack. Should have touched Tom when he was right fresh out of the shower, just so Sol had a good read on the situation—but Tom’s balls are pulled up tight enough that he’s probably not far off.

“Why don’t you fuck Edward?” Sol asks. “I’ll play with his nipples, and you can see how nice he bottoms. Bet he’d love having your dick.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would,” Tom says, slowly pulling his dick from between Edward’s lips. His eyes are half-lidded, fixated on Edward’s mouth. Edward’s drooling—his chin is wet, and he sways toward Tom, stopped only by Sol’s hand holding him steady. “You gonna be able to relax, puppy?”

Sol chuckles, gets up from the floor—he’s too fucking old to be kneeling for that long. He gives his dick a casual stroke, slaps it across Edward’s flushed cheek a couple times. “He relaxes up real good if I eat his ass, don’t you, Edward?”

“Yeah,” Edward says breathlessly. “Please, Sol—please.” He’s fucking gorgeous—spit smeared all over his face, his lips red and wet, his eyes big and dark. His nipples are perked right up, and his cock is swaying heavily every time he so much as moves.

“You eat ass?” Tom asks, a touch breathlessly.

Sol shrugs. “Course. Why?” He hazards a glance at Tom, and— _oh_.

Tom’s eyes are bright, his head tilted slightly to the side like he’s considering something.

Sol considers his options, goes for the most obvious one. “You want yours eaten?”

“Not today,” Tom says, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, “but I have a proposition for you, if you’ll hear me out.”

Sol glances down at Edward, still kneeling. “What do you figure, Edward? Should I hear him out?”

Edward nods. Swallows. “Please,” he rasps, and god, Edward Little like that, on his knees with Tom’s hand in his hair, melting against him? Sol’d give him anything.

Sol pulls his eyes away from Edward, and back to Tom. “Go ahead, then.”

🏚️

“Sorry, it’s the second drawer,” Edward says. He twists his fingers, and Sol feels a shock of arousal shoot up his spine. Edward’s pillow muffles the inadvertent noise that he makes, which is good because—fucking _hell_ , Edward’s doing it again, the bastard, because that’s what Sol always used to do to him. “I, uh. Moved them.”

“That’s fine,” Tom says. “I’ve found them now.”

Sol focuses on the rustling of Tom opening the condom box, tearing the foil packet, anything but the feeling of Edward’s fingers in his ass, opening him up carefully while Sol drools on the pillow and wishes desperately that he’d grabbed Edward’s instead of his own.

“God, you’re beautiful like this,” Edward says. “I wish you’d told me, wish I’d known—Sol, my god.”

“Shut up,” Sol mutters. He rocks back against Edward’s fingers. “Quit treating me like I’m fragile.”

“Think he’s treating you careful so he doesn’t come,” Tom observes, and then follows that with his hand on Sol’s back, carefully petting from his shoulder all the way down his back. “You should see him, he’s barely holding it together.”

Sol chuckles, relaxes a bit. “Yeah? He a turned-on mess?”

“Hey,” Edward says, but it’s breathy and ragged. If Edward’s trying to sound outraged, well, that ain’t how it sounds.

“Cock dripping on the sheets and everything,” Tom says warmly, rubbing circles on the small of Sol’s back. “He was never like that with me—no, that’s not a criticism, Edward.”

“Bloody well should be,” Sol mutters, but it’s loud enough to hear, because Edward twists his fingers, sends a shiver down Sol’s body that threatens to collapse his knees, and _god_ , why had he let Tom talk him into being on all fours for this? His thighs are fucking _shaking_ , and if his cock hasn’t dripped on the sheets yet, that’s by chance alone.

“I’ll fuck you myself,” Edward says darkly. “That’s three fingers, Sol, and you’re just— _taking_ them.”

“He’s being _very_ good,” Tom agrees, and Sol bites into the corner of his pillow, grinds his teeth on the high threadcount Egyptian cotton whatever-the-fuck. “Are you ready to roll over, then, Sol?”

“Jesus, yeah,” Sol grouses. “Took you enough time, Edward.” It’s a fucking relief to shift to his back so he can quit worrying about whether or not his knees are gonna give out, whether his leg is gonna hold up, but the wet smack his cock makes as it slaps against his stomach and the suspiciously cold spot under his lower back means—yeah, he’s fucking closer than he means to be, especially considering—

“Alright, Edward,” Tom says. “Up you go.”

Edward sighs in response, and Sol looks down toward the foot of the bed—and there they are, both of them on their knees, pressed against each other, kissing like they’re passing the last oxygen in the world back and forth between the two of them. Tom’s got one hand over Edward’s nipple, putting pressure on the piercing, and the other hand wrapped around both their cocks. Sol props himself up on his elbows, watches them.

(Edward’s still buying those ridiculous luxury condoms, but Sol has to admit—the black latex looks fucking good on Tom’s cock, especially when it’s pressed up against Edward’s bare one.)

Tom’s the one who breaks the kiss, looks over at Sol. “All good?”

“Yeah,” Sol says, nodding. “You can fuck me, I’m ready.” He waits for Tom to smile—christ, what colour _are_ his eyes, because they look blue right now, and he could have sworn they were grey a minute ago—and then Sol shifts his gaze to Edward, makes a show of licking his lips, and waggling his tongue. “Come on, there, puppy. I got a face for you to sit on.”

“Jesus fuck, Sol,” Edward says, but his cock is bobbing against his stomach, looking painfully hard as he slowly separates himself from Tom, and approaches Sol on all fours. He ducks his head, kisses Sol on the mouth, nice and gentle—and he tastes like Tom and himself both, all warm skin and spit mingling and Edward breathing through his nose so he can just keep kissing Sol.

It’s fucking good, but it ain’t what he’s here for. Sol reaches over to Edward’s chest and pinches both nipples, shifting the bars under the skin. He breaks the kiss, but keeps their faces close. “Didn’t ask you up here to make out with you,” Sol warns. “But I bet if you’re real good, and you lean forward nice, you can make out with Tom while I rim you.”

Edward shudders. “Sol, you gotta stop talking like that.”

“He really doesn’t,” Tom says, calm as ever—but when Sol glances down at him, he catches a slight tremor in Tom’s hand as he adjusts the position of Sol’s legs, making room for himself between them. God, he’s gorgeous, but in a fucking weird unearthly way, like his eyes could roll back in his head at any moment, and that would just be par for the fucking course.

(Sol wouldn’t even care, is the thing. Fucking Edward and Tom both is great, and if they’ll keep him around, he’ll fucking well stay. He can get used to the small town. He can get used to eating steaks that used to be named _Bessie_.)

“What do you figure, Sol?” Tom asks, all casual and light as you please even though his nipples are visible hard, and he’s stroking his cock even though there’s lube on the condom already, looking like he’s maybe even forgotten he’s doing it because he’s too busy staring at Sol’s body, at Sol’s cock, at his belly, and Sol swears—he’ll fucking install a chinup bar outside or something, give it a couple of months until he’s got something for Tom to really look at. “Do you want to watch me fuck you, or would you rather Edward gets into position first?”

“Can I trust you to make sure Edward does as he’s told?” Sol asks, and _christ_ —the way the two of them look at each other, all electricity and wordless connection, so thick you could cut it with a knife—but then Edward drops his gaze to Sol, puts his hand on Sol’s chest, over his heart.

“I’ll make sure,” Tom says, shifting on his knees, his eyes dropping to Sol’s ass. “You ready?”

“Watch him go in,” Edward says softly. “I’ll be good, Sol. I just want to watch your face when he puts his cock in you.”

Sol exhales. Tries to relax, because it’s been—well. It’s just that he’d never, with Edward, not once, and their dynamic has always been Sol bullying Edward up against a wall, and Edward falling into an aroused mess over it, and Sol doesn’t want to lose that—but he wants this, too. And, yeah, tonight it’s Tom, and it’s going to be hot as fuck, and Sol’s thankful that Tom’s not calling him out on it, because he can fucking _feel_ his ass twitching over how bad he wants it—but maybe another night, it’ll be Edward fumbling his way through it, and Sol’s head cradled in Tom’s lap, or Tom carefully pressing his cock between Sol’s lips as Edward fucks him, and that’ll be fucking hot too, it’s just—

“I still want you,” Edward says in a near-whisper, his lips pressed right close to Sol’s ear. “I don’t fucking care, you can plough me into the mattress first thing tomorrow morning if that’s what you wanna do—but fuck, please, I wanna see my ex top you, Sol—I want to watch, I want to see what it’s like when he tops, when you bottom, I want to _see_.”

Sol swallows. Turns his head, presses a chaste kiss on Edward’s lips. “Alright,” he rasps, grasping onto the out that Edward’s giving him—and whatever, they’ll figure the rest of this shit out later. “S’pose if you wanna see…” He looks down at Tom, bites his lip, nods.

Tom gives him that mysterious little half-smile, and then drops his eyes back between Sol’s legs again, and Sol’s trying to stop himself from tensing up—but Edward’s hand is in his. Edward is holding his hand, and petting his hair, and murmuring all kinds of stupid shit, like _I fucking love you_ and _oh, fuck, look at his dick going in_ and _how does it feel, Sol_ and the thing is, it feels really fucking good.

Tom’s careful about it, for one thing—he’s watching Sol, he’s watching Edward, he’s flicking his eyes between Sol’s face and Sol’s cock, and Sol’s ass, and—oh, god, the slow steady _press_ of him inside.

“That’s the hottest fucking thing,” Edward breathes, and Sol would agree with him if he could remember how to talk, because it feels like all the air is just steadily being pressed out of him, replaced by warmth and the slick slide of the condom against the lube that Edward had fingered up in him, and then Tom’s thighs are pressing against Sol’s, and Tom is exhaling, and looking back at Sol with his forelock fallen down over his eyes, and—that’s it. He’s in.

Sol looks over at Edward, because he’ll fucking call it off if there’s anything on Edward’s face he doesn’t like—but Edward looks entranced. He’s squeezing Sol’s hand hard enough to cut off the blood supply, and his other hand is on his own cock, like the selfish bastard he is, and Sol doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry, only that he’s got this weird manic joy bubbling up in his chest, because it matters that it’s _him_. That Tom and Edward are setting aside all the shit in their past, and all the hurt and the betrayal and the whispered arguments in the kitchen—all of that is just being placed over to the side because of Sol, and if it wasn’t Sol, this wouldn’t be happening.

“You can fuck me,” Sol rasps, and if Tom was waiting for permission, that seems to be what he needed to hear, because he steadies himself with one hand on Sol’s knee, and starts fucking into him: short, gradual strokes while Sol gets used to the feeling of Tom’s cock, steadily building the pace until he brushes against Sol’s prostate, and Sol groans without meaning to.

“Like that,” Edward says, and Sol reaches for him with his free hand, grabbing at his thigh.

“Get up here,” he says. “Christ, I said I’d eat your ass, come up here before you come all over yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Edward says, his words falling all over themselves, and between Sol’s legs, Tom chuckles to himself, grinds into Sol’s ass the same way he had into Sol’s mouth, and god, Sol’s glad for it when Edward swings his leg over Sol’s face, lowers himself down, because then Sol doesn’t have to worry about what his own face is doing, he just has to tilt it up, open his mouth, and drag his tongue over Edward’s ass, feeling him shudder.

God, he tastes good. He’s always tasted good, and it’s been literal years since Sol has done this, because contrary to what he told Tom, Sol usually just...doesn’t. Not unless he’s with somebody like Edward, who falls to pieces over it every time, his thighs clenching against Sol’s ears, and Sol absolutely drowning in Edward, his head spinning with the sheer sensual joy of it, and a little bit of oxygen deprivation, because Edward never remembers that Sol needs to breath down here, and god, it’s so fucking good.

Tom’s still driving into him, regular and steady, like one of those fucking—ticky things that his siblings had learned to play piano by. The steady rhythm means Sol knows what to expect, and that makes it easier to relax, go loose, to focus on the building of pleasure up his spine, and the way that Edward is gasping, and grinding down on Sol’s face, the desperate way he’s rocking back against Sol, like he’d break Sol’s nose if he thought it would get him any further onto Sol’s tongue—

“I can’t believe you’ve never fucked him before,” Tom says. “Ned, puppy—look at him, he’s gorgeous like this. Look at his thighs.”

“I’m looking,” Edward says, and he sounds like he’s drunk, slurring his words like when he’s into his second bottle of fancy wine even though he hadn't even finished his beer. “You shoulda seen him when he showed up—he was all sweaty, and he was so mad at me, and it was so fucking hot—”

“I can imagine it,” Tom says. Pauses at the top of the upstroke, rubbing his cock steadily and firmly deep inside Sol, and fuck, if Sol didn’t have both his hands on Edward’s thighs, keeping him steady, he could wrap a hand on his own cock and finish this all off in three strokes. “You should be better to him, Edward.”

“I’m trying,” Edward says, in an oddly uneven tone of voice.

“Harder,” Tom says. “You have to try harder, I won’t be—”

Wet sounds, for a moment or two, and another rumble of thunder from outside. Tom’s cock is hard and steady in Sol’s ass, and Edward lifted up from Sol’s face just enough that Sol can breathe, and they’re kissing again, they have to be kissing again—

“—here,” Tom finishes, and he starts fucking into Sol again. “They need me at work.”

It’s so much. It’s pleasure going up and down his spine, and his cock aching to be touched, his balls heavy and full, it’s Edward’s body over him, cutting off his air and then letting him breathe again. Sol’s head spins with arousal and love and the knowledge that he’s going to stay, and he’s going to let this play out, and he’ll wake up in the morning with Edward curled around him, and Tom in the room across the hall, and he’ll eat all Tom’s expensive granola while he’s gone, but he’ll replace it before Tom gets back, and cook him steak besides to make up for it.

“I know,” Edward says breathlessly. “I know, I know, I—it’s okay. Sol and I will be here when you’re back. If you want. It’s...”

“You love him,” Tom says, and Edward replies, “I do,” and someone’s hand is on Sol’s cock, only he’s not sure whose hand it is, but it doesn’t much matter, because Tom grinds into him again, and Edward presses back against his face, his balls heavy on Sol’s chin, and everything is stars, and the sun, and Sol’s pleasure echoed in the thunder outside that shakes the house, rattling the windows in their panes, and sheer pleasure going up and down Sol’s spine, all of his muscles twitching as he comes, and comes, and finally relaxes against the bed, feeling like a wrung-out rag.

“Fuck,” Edward says distinctly, and his thighs tighten around Sol’s ears, his come pattering onto Sol’s stomach along with Sol’s, and Sol should really—shift to the side, or something, so it doesn’t all run off onto the sheets, but he absolutely cannot be arsed to move right now.

“Oh, god,” Tom says, and there’s the wet snap of the condom being pulled off, and then Tom is coming on him too, and there’s no fucking hope for the sheets at all, and Sol absolutely cannot find it in himself to care, because holy _fuck_ , it’s good.

“Oof,” Edward says, and he collapses on his side next to Sol. “You okay, Sol?”

“Never better,” Sol croaks. He props himself up on his elbows, looks at the absolute mess on his stomach. Three people’s come is...a lot of come, as it turns out, when it’s all in the same place like that. “Christ, I’ll have to shower.”

“I should hope so,” Tom says. He’s sitting back on his heels, with his hand on Sol’s thigh, catching his breath. “Edward, the spare sheets?”

“Fuck if I know,” Edward says blearily. “Wherever you left them?”

“That was six months ago,” Tom scolds, but there’s no real heat in it.

“Yeah, Edward,” Sol says. “The spare sheets,” like Sol has ever had a set of spare sheets in his fucking life.

(Admittedly, he’s slept on the couch a couple times after a particularly raunchy sex session had more or less destroyed his bed, but that’s not anything he needs to bring up right now.)

He glances over at Edward, who is lying on the bed, all flushed and sweaty and happy, with his leg pressed against Sol’s ribs, and his hand brushing against Tom’s thigh, and he thinks—yeah. This is great.

This is perfect, really.

“Thanks,” Sol says, and he has half a mind to try and figure out how to communicate the rest of it—how fucking grateful he is for all of this, how good he feels, how happy he is that they’re both there, how he’d be more than willing to cook breakfast in the morning—and that’s when the lights flicker, and then go out.

They lie there waiting for a moment, three naked men on a bed that has really seen better days—but the house is absolutely dead silent, and the lights don’t come back on.

“Well, _fuck_ ,” Tom says, after a moment.

“You gonna lick me off, Edward?”

“Oh my god, you can still shower, Sol.”

“In the dark?”

“I have to make a call,” Tom says, exasperated. “My phone’s downstairs.” He pats Sol’s thigh, and then gets up from the bed, leaves the room confidently, as though he doesn’t need the light to see. Lightning flashes outside, and it’s enough that Sol catches a flash of Tom’s long legs as he leaves.

Sol exhales. Stares into the darkness, and feels somebody’s come slowly sliding off his right hip onto the bed. Has half a mind to feel around for Edward’s head, press his face into it—but he won’t be able to see it in the darkness, so there’s not going to be any joy in it.

Later, he thinks...but then Edward shifts, awkwardly blots at Sol’s stomach with a tissue he’s dredged up from somewhere, cleaning up the mess by touch alone.

“You alright?” Edward asks, when he’s more or less gotten all of it. “With all of the…”

Sol laughs, rolls over and snuggles up to Edward, his face pressed against Edward’s bony calves. “Yeah,” he says, nuzzling against Edward. “This was real nice tonight. And it was fucking hot seeing the two of you together.” He hesitates a second—but he can’t see Edward’s face in the pitch black, so he just forges forward anyway. “Physically and emotionally.”

It’s the right answer, because Edward relaxes, rubs his face against Sol’s legs. “Okay,” he says, in a voice that wobbles a little bit on the edges. “Thank you. I’m...grateful, I guess, is a good word for it?”

“I fucking know,” Sol says, smug. “And I’m gonna show it by fixing your fucking house, because if I have to say _I love you_ every two seconds, you’ll get bored of me.”

Edward laughs, grabs Sol’s foot and squeezes it. “Will not.”

“Will too,” Sol says, and he rolls onto his stomach, because at this point, fuck the sheets. “Anyways, you gotta save all your words for—”

“Oh, sorry,” Tom says from the door. His face is lit up from the cellphone he’s holding in his hand, and normally it would be fucking hilarious, but the look on his face is—not great.

“Tom,” Edward says, breathless. “Hey, why don’t you—”

“What’s gone on?” Sol asks, bracing himself for something bad—someone has died, or there’s a major accident, a series of fatalities, Tom’s lost someone he cares about, there’s been a fire—

Tom sighs, leans against the doorframe. “Work trip cancelled,” he says, dejected. “Storm’s taken down a couple of major powerlines, they’ll be calling off the tournament in the morning. Nothing to report on.” He stares down at his phone mournfully. “I’m to...stay home. Which will be fine, I’ll stay out of your way, I know I was supposed to be gone and I’ll do my best to be, I know this isn’t what we’d planned—”

“I mean,” Sol says. “It’s fucking fine, yeah?”

Tom looks up at him, all wide eyes in a pale face lit from beneath by his phone, and god, if that’s how bright his phone usually is, it’s a wonder he hasn’t burnt his vision completely out. “You and Edward…”

“I think,” Sol says, grinning openly, “it’s been pretty well established at this point that there’s no concern with us fucking when you’re home. With or without you or whatever.”

“...be that as it may,” Tom says, “I don’t really want to interfere with your visit…”

Edward groans. “Oh, fuck.”

Tom raises his eyebrows.

“I asked Sol to move in with us,” Edward says sheepishly, and Sol tenses, because that’s a discussion that’s better for—

“Oh, that's good, then,” Tom says, with absolutely no hesitation. He tilts the phone toward the bed, looks at Sol and Edward lying there, curled up against each other, and smiles. “The two of you look happy, you know.”

Edward ducks his head, embarrassed, and Sol just grins, wide and easy.

“Damn right we do,” Sol says, and that’s about all that needs to be said about that.

They’ll figure the rest of it out in the morning.

(God, Sol hopes Tom isn’t attached to the tile in the kitchen.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that, then.
> 
> Did I mean to write something this long? Absolutely not.
> 
> Did I ride the story to its logical conclusion once I had the sense of the shape of it?
> 
> Absolutely.
> 
> Thanks to [Autumn](/users/for_autumn_i_am/), who beta-read for me, and also patted my head and told me that I would be able to get it done when it was starting to look unattainable for me to do so. (I did get there, eventually!)
> 
> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/heyktula) and on [tumblr](https://heyktula.tumblr.com/), though I regularly can't keep up with my feed on either.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter two posts at the end of the month, and chapter three shortly after that. :)


End file.
